by Andre Brink
“What is ‘a sense of history’ in a country like this?” he would ask. “It’s a colonial view. I have no sentiment for the junk constructed by our ancestors by way of third-rate imitations of outdated European styles. Our greatest asset is the fact that we have no history. We’re today’s people. Our dimension is the future.” And I must admit that there is a peculiar excitement in the skyscrapers he designs, with their steel and copper and reinforced concrete, their clean surfaces and sweeping functional lines, the accumulation of storeys until they start boring the imagination with their inability to suggest anything beyond themselves. (“Why rely on suggestions? We’re not Catholics, we have no mysticism. We’re Calvinists, Puritans. We are interested in what exists tangibly and can be organised and structured.”) It sounds convincing, but one should take it with a pinch of salt. It represents Theo’s “official” façade. When he is not on the defence he is really much more limp and uncertain of himself. Like Dad.
He has an attractive if demure wife, and two children; and a house in the select suburb of Waterkloof. A balanced family man. He would never dream of having an extramarital affair or of staying away from church on Sundays. (“No, I don’t regard myself as a very fervent believer. But that’s not important. It’s a matter of order and discipline in one’s existence. A pattern. What’s wrong with it? Without it one has nothing fixed to hold on to.”)
I don’t know what made me start this passage on Theo in the first place. He is of no importance to my narrative. None whatsoever.
The service was concluded with organ music. Ma turned off the transistor.
“Morning, Sergeant,” she said. “Right, now we can talk. Kristina, tea!”
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, Missus, but we must get a statement from you, you see. It won’t take long.”
The thin blond constable sat quietly at a far corner of the table, drumming his fingers on the wood while the redheaded sergeant opened his file and took down our short statements. When he’d finished, he read out the stiffly correct sentences, and pushed the file to us for our signatures. First Ma, then I.
“When can we have the woman back for the funeral?” asked Ma. “I’ve already sent a message to her people.”
“The doctor will do his autopsy later today, Missus. You can have the body in the morning.”
“Thanks. I hope Mandisi is behaving himself?”
“Yes, he isn’t giving any trouble.”
“Does this mean the death penalty?” I asked.
He laughed. “Oh no. If the judge hears it’s a matter of tribal customs and stuff he’ll be very lenient. Probably a year or eighteen months or thereabouts.”
“I’ll have to find another foreman,” said Ma, sighing.
“Ja, these people really make it difficult for one.” He rose, returning his cap smartly to his crew-cut head, obviously relieved to have completed his business. “Well, time to go.”
I accompanied them to the van. High on the hill there was a small cloud of dust: Louis coming back from town.
Just before they drove off, the constable got out again to collect something from the back. He came round the van with the grey blanket in which we’d wrapped the corpse.
“We brought this back,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s winter, you know, and we thought the children might need it in the night.”
5
SOON AFTER THE police had left visitors arrived: the Weidemans from a neighbouring farm, Gert and Loekie, both youngish, in their thirties. He had the solid body and bandy legs of a lock-forward, his ears large and fleshy; there was an aggressiveness about his self-confidence which tended to irk me. Loekie, on the other hand, was timid and colourless, her body beginning to sag after three children in rapid succession, like a large soft fungus under her demure dress. I remembered her the way she’d been shortly after their marriage: a dynamic girl, bubbling with enthusiasm, ready to make a contribution to any conversation. Not much to look at, but with an attractive, provocative personality. She had a degree in modern languages, if I remembered correctly, and apparently she’d been quite a’ talented pianist. But all that had faded with the years and now she was placid and passive, and plain.
“Good day,” said Gert, pumping my hand vigorously. “Thought we’d come over for a while. Sundays are so boring on the farm, you start missing people you don’t even know.”
“What about something to drink for the visitors?” I suggested to Ma.
“Don’t suppose there’s any beer?” said Gert, laughing.
“Coffee or tea?” said Ma, unamused.
“Whatever you have,” said Loekie. “Please don’t take any trouble.”
“Make it coffee,” ordered Gert, sitting down with his massive legs spread, his jeans stretched over the bulge between his thighs.
“Kristina!” Ma called.
“I heard you had such sports on the farm last night,” Gert said jovially. “Isn’t it just typical? I also had a close shave, you know, coming back from Queenstown. Went there for rugby and had a bit of a party afterwards.” He grinned defiantly in Loekie’s direction; she looked down. “It was past midnight when we came back in the fog. And coming round a bend there was a whole lot of kaffirs right in front of us. Strange creatures, aren’t they, always walk right in the middle of the road. Jeez, I tell you that bus properly skidded sideways the way old Jopie had to stand on the brakes.” He laughed, his dugs shaking loosely under the T-shirt he wore winter and summer. “But I can tell you one thing, when we got out of that bus we gave them a proper work-out right there in the road, man. There wasn’t one of them straight on his black feet when we drove off. I don’t think they’ll be a traffic hazard again after this.”
From the distant past, an unpleasant memory: our university rugby teams returning to Stellenbosch on Saturday nights, singing uproariously and drunkenly. In those days I played wing for the seconds. Invariably a voice would ring out: “Right, boys, who’s for beating up hottentots tonight?” The bus coming to a standstill every time a couple of Coloureds were spotted in the roads. The naked, savage pleasure in the sweaty bodies tumbling out to settle on the passers-by like a great swarm of bees. I never took part. Of course, I couldn’t stay high and dry in the bus to be jeered at: I jumped out with the rest of them, but then made sure I kept out of the throng. At that age one doesn’t want to be “left out”. But I never joined in the beatings: I must make that absolutely clear. And really, the blokes didn’t mean to be cruel or anything. It was just a way of getting rid of excess energy; in later years, I’m sure, they all outgrew it. But in Gert it annoyed me. After all, he was by no means an adolescent any more.
Involuntarily I glanced at Louis, but he was holding a newspaper in front of his face, his knuckles showing white through the skin of his clenched hands.
Another car stopped outside. Stretching my neck, I looked through the window.
“Bet you it’s old Lawrence,” said Gert.
“Yes, it’s the Lawrences all right.”
“They probably also heard the story,” he commented.
I opened the front door as the little mouse-woman was coming up the cement stairs to the stoep, followed by her husband, large and flabby in a shapeless green sweater and faded corduroy pants flapping loosely round his legs. Old Mr Lawrence was an unusually hirsute man with a large mane, bushy eyebrows, and unkempt moustache and beard covering most of his face – looking for all the world like an armpit with a pipe stuck into it.
He removed the pipe. Through the hair on his face I could distinguish a glittering of eyes. “Hello, Martin. How are you, my boy?”
“So-so, Mr Lawrence.”
“Nasty business, hey?” he said. “One never knows with these people. And what’s your Ma going to do now?”
“It won’t be easy,” I said neutrally, not wanting the neighbours to suspect anything yet. “I heard you’ve sold your farm?”
“Ja, the old useless,” commented Ma from inside. “And Gert too. The whole lot of them hands-upping ju
st like that.”
“Hey, steady, Auntie,” said Gert. “It’s got nothing to do with hands-upping.”
“Oh really?” Behind her teasing tone was a solid layer of reproach, as hard as rock. “I could still expect it from Mr Lawrence. But Afrikaners like you! Loekie, couldn’t you have stopped your husband then?”
“Ag, Auntie, you know what men are like. And Gert knows best, I’m sure.”
“You can’t let a man have his way all the time,” said Ma sternly. “In the old days it was the women who dug in their heels when their menfolk pulled in their tails between their legs.”
“Louis,” I said, trying to change the topic, “aren’t you saying hello to the visitors? Where are your manners, man?”
Openly resentful, he put away his newspaper and rose to shake hands.
“Well, and how’s the army?” asked Mrs Lawrence.
“He’s out of it now,” I said quickly.
“Gave ’em hell, eh?” the old man insisted. “Good for you. In future they’ll know to leave us well alone.”
“You should have wiped the whole breed of vermin from the face of the land,” said Gert.
“Why didn’t you join us then?” asked Louis with a cool aggressiveness I hadn’t expected. “Instead of staying behind on your farm?”
“We can’t all go to the border, man,” said Gert, off balance for a moment. “We’ve got to hold the fort over here too.”
“I thought you sold out?” asked Louis. I didn’t like the expression on his face.
“Ja, go on, tell him,” chuckled Ma. “Withdrawing from all the frontiers, that’s what they’re doing.”
“What’s the use?” Louis demanded. “We’re just exposing new vulnerable frontiers all the time. Angola, Rhodesia, Moçambique, South-West. And now you’re starting right here too.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gert. “Don’t underestimate our boys, lightie. We had a very good look before we made up our minds. Life here in the Eastern Cape just isn’t worth one’s while any more. You work yourself to death, until you haven’t got any nails left to scratch your head. And before you can wipe out your eyes, the Blacks have got it all. What has three centuries of civilisation done for them? They’re just as savage as they were to start with. Look at what happened here on your own farm last night, man.”
“So now you’re running away to the city?” said Ma.
“No one’s running away, Auntie. But you’ve got to use your common sense. If you want to get anywhere in the world today, you can only do it in the cities. Isn’t that so, Martin?”
“I can’t agree more.”
“Gert is going to manage a big factory,” offered Loekie, her pride shining through her self-consciousness. “Agricultural implements.”
“Everybody is running after machinery,” said Louis, sneering, with all the irritating confidence of his youthful romanticism. “In the end there won’t be any place left for people.”
“I thought you were going to be an engineer yourself?” I asked sternly
“Didn’t you know I gave that up long ago?”
“Back to the horse-cart?” I said derisively.
In my childhood many farmers in our district had still driven their horse-carts. On Sundays one would see at least ten or twelve of them fastened to the pepper trees surrounding the church; and even the farmers who’d come to town in their Buicks or Chevs or Mercuries, had regularly used their horse-carts to visit their neighbours.
Everything which had been so uncomfortable and primitive then acquired a wonderful romantic air after I’d gone overseas to pursue my studies. (Just as I tend to romanticise that sojourn nowadays? Or just as, writing in London today, I falsify that weekend in my mind? Is that what’s been happening all the time I’ve been convinced of my absolute honesty in recalling it?)
My nostalgia, during those two years in England, was reinforced and nurtured by my friendship with Welcome Nyaluza. That night in Lambeth; the wild party. It was midwinter, and very cold. The first snow had fallen the week before and turned into slush in the soggy streets. I felt just like the slush. My funds were low after too extravagant spending trying to impress my first foreign girlfriend, only to lose her to a Kenyan sculptor in the end. Hell, and I’d thought that at least she’d been a girl with some taste. I tried to console myself by blaming it on English girls in general: all the culture in the bloody world, but when it came to men all they wanted was a big cock – and we all knew about Blacks, didn’t we?
The prospect of a good party had persuaded me to leave my miserable digs and drown my sorrows. And there certainly was more than enough to drink that night. Bad and cheap, but enough. A congestion of bodies in the cramped flat. Like Aunt Rienie’s birthday party so many years later. Bea. But that night it had been Welcome. A veritable United Nations of types and languages: English, Americans, French, Scandinavians, Germans, Greeks, Japanese, even a few Poles and Russians. How incredible that in that Babel I should have found Welcome Nyaluza. Or wasn’t it so remarkable after all? Often, in the two years I spent in England, I would be struck by exactly the same phenomenon: the two people more or less predestined to drift together in the course of such a party, isolating themselves in a corner and excluding the rest of the world, would be an Afrikaner and an African. Strange.
The initial effect of the smoking and drinking on my depression was an even greater morbidity than before. I withdrew into a corner, half hidden by curtains. And then the voice said:
“You look lonesome.”
Through a haze I saw a very small, very thin, very black man with prominent glasses – much like Charlie in later years, but several years younger.
“How’d you guess?” I asked.
“Because one lonesome man never fails to recognise another.” He promptly sat down on the floor next to me. “Let’s drink to it.” Until that moment we’d been speaking English; but as he raised his glass he said: “Vrystaat!”
“Don’t tell me you come from South Africa?” I said, staring at him unashamedly.
“Of course. You too?” He burst out laughing. “Oh brother!” And then we switched to Afrikaans.
“Wait till you’ve been here for as long as I have,” he told me. “Then you’ll really find out what it means to be lonesome, man.”
“For how long have you been here then?”
“Ten years.”
“What for?”
“Swotting. On an exit permit.”
“Were you in politics at home?”
“ANC. But nothing special. You know how it is, don’t you? The Boers just don’t like learned kaffirs.”
We refilled our glasses and returned to our secluded spot, talking non-stop. All the d’you remembers of compatriots in a foreign land. The pepper trees and the horse-carts, the silence of Sundays, the din of stock fairs, the smell of wood-smoke in winter, the taste of green apricots and loquats, sweet hanepoot grapes and watermelons. Boys swimming naked in muddy pools. Bird-nesting, crawling along slack willow-branches and dropping into the water. Cooking a tortoise in its shell. Fighting with clay-sticks. Pumpkins on flat iron roofs. The scare of the tokoloshe. Sweet-potatoes baked in their skins. Mud between your toes. Frost on the brittle white grass of winter. How irrational, the things one discovered one missed most. I told him about my earliest memory: how Ma would hand me over to the care of old Aia, our Black nanny, whenever I’d been unmanageable; to be tied with a blanket to her back, resting on the soft mass of her enormous posterior: my earliest and deepest experience of security. And how, as we’d grown up, Theo and I would join the servants for breakfast, squatting on our haunches round the three-legged iron pot, helping ourselves to tough putu porridge in our cupped hands.
Later in the evening, tearful with booze, I confided in him about Janet who’d dropped me for her Kenyan sculptor; and he told me about the Nozizwe he’d left behind although he’d paid the lobola in full before going away; they’d planned for her to follow him as soon as possible, but somehow it had never materialised. O
h no, we decided together, it wasn’t good for a man to be alone and without a woman.
When he discovered how far gone I was, Welcome put an arm round me and escorted me outside where the icy wet air sent us reeling backwards. He hailed a cab to take us home, insisting on going with me all the way. Just as well, for as it turned out I couldn’t remember my address in my stupor. The rest of the night is a very muddled memory. For how long we drove through the streets of London in search of a building with black front pillars, I don’t know. In the end Welcome had to stop the taxi when the fare on the meter tallied with what he had left in his pocket: what had happened to mine, I still don’t know – my wallet was missing. And then we had to walk back, from wherever in North London we’d left the cab to his digs in Stepney. The winter dawn was already beginning to light up drably when we reached his messy little room. How he’d managed to support me all the way with that thin body of his, God alone knows. As we crossed his doorstep I slumped to the floor. He must have put me to bed, for when I finally came round the dull grey afternoon sun was falling through the dirty window; and he was sitting at the foot of the crumpled bed with a cup of tea on his knees.
We became inseparable. Welcome, my friend. Now I’m waxing sentimental about him again: now it is his turn to be transformed by memory. But we were friends. We really were. At one stage, after I’d been kicked out of my digs, I shared his room for a few weeks until I managed to find something else. In a way he also acted as mentor to me, encouraging me to read stuff I would never have touched otherwise: not only economics and politics, but even novels and – true as God – poetry: the last time in my life I indulged myself in that way. Welcome himself had already obtained his Ph.D. in history, and he was lecturing at SOAS. What I’ll always remember about him is the incredible variety of friends he had, ranging from professional vagabonds to nuclear physicists, from sculptors and painters to palaeontologists, from bank clerks and street cleaners to drivers of Bentleys.
