by Andre Brink
In the course of the next hour, before we could return to Tant Poppie’s house, I began to conjure up aches and diseases in my body which I’d never suspected before. Because I, too, was asked penetratingly about my health. This was the most surprising, and in many respects the most revealing, experience of that Nagmaal day: that instead of ignoring me as before, everybody began to show an almost indecent interest in me. Where I came from, who my parents were, what work I did, what I was doing here…and those were only the preliminaries.
Among the people Grandpa Lukas introduced me to was Isak Smous with his shiny bald head. I’d wanted to meet him for some time now, as his connection with Little-Lukas and his regular trips to the outside world made him a key witness. But there was little time for conversation on this hectic day. Also, he looked rather sat-upon among the members of his family: his wife Alie, with a face like a meat-grinder, and her two identical sisters, Ralie and Malie, a threesome whom even that fucking old Greek, Perseus or Theseus or whatever, would not have dared to tackle without gloves; and a clamour of kids in tow. But before we had time to go beyond an exchange of greetings, Grandpa Lukas brought on somebody else for me to meet.
Proper Meal
In between I tried to keep my eyes open for another glimpse of the young woman with the dark hair. But she was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, I began to think with a sort of resignation, she hadn’t been in the church after all; or otherwise she was just making a bloody habit of disappearing before she could be pinned down in any spot—at the pool, at my night window, wherever.
Another person I lost in the throng was Grandpa Lukas himself. One moment he was still beside me, talking, introducing me, waving new people in our direction; the next he was gone. And in the end Tant Poppie and I went home alone, where a massive meal was waiting: she had hung everything over the fire in the hearth before church, obviously knowing from a lifetime of experience exactly how to go about it. Goat’s head baked in its skin, yellow rice with raisins from the Devil’s Valley, stewed quinces, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, a fucking gargantuan meal for just the two of us.
“Pity Grandpa Lukas couldn’t join us for dinner,” I said when we were half-way through.
She looked surprised. “What makes you think he would?”
“He’s so thin,” I said. “One can almost see right through him. I’m sure he could do with a proper meal.”
“Grandpa Lukas stopped eating a long time ago.” She wiped her mouth with a large serviette. There was finality in the gesture.
“But why?” I asked.
“Because the man is dead,” she said. “More than a hundred years ago already.”
With the Children
AFTER THAT MEAL I succumbed to a sleep of death. What Tant Poppie had said about Grandpa Lukas should have been enough to keep me awake for the rest of my goddamn life, but in retrospect I think the shock was simply too much to handle. Perhaps I didn’t want to believe it. And when my head hit the pillow I was gone. It was four o’clock before I came round again, dumb and thick with sleep. Tant Poppie wasn’t there, presumably out on a ‘case’ or visiting. Unable to stomach the heavy smell of the house I stumbled outside, although I didn’t quite know where to go.
That was when the change in the settlement’s attitude towards me really started coming home to me. It began with the children.
As I came out on the stoep there was a young boy waiting for me, with a wooden pail of water.
“Is this for Tant Poppie?” I asked.
“No, Oom, I brought it for Oom.”
“What for?”
“Water is scarce, Oom. So I asked Pa, Oom, because we still got some in our well, Oom, and he said it was all right, Oom.”
“Who’s your father?”
“It’s Isak Smous, Oom.”
I was rather touched by the gesture, all the more so after the standoffishness in the place over the last few days. “You must please thank him for me. And thank you, too.”
“Yes, Oom.”
I carried the pail to my room and very carefully, without spilling a drop, emptied it into the pitcher. When I returned outside he took the pail from me and ran off, kicking up small clouds of dry dust.
I followed one of my usual routes through the settlement. At the heap of stones behind the churchyard my personal little pest popped up again, streaked with his trademark mucus.
“Afternoon, Oom,” he said. It was the first time he’d greeted me of his own accord.
For a moment I looked at him suspiciously. “Yes, good afternoon. What do you want?”
“Brought Oom this.”
He approached, whisked the scum from his upper lip with a deft flick of his tongue, and held out something between his cupped hands.
“What’s this?”
“Chameleon, Oom. It’s for Oom.” Adding, as I still hesitated, “For good luck, Oom.”
“I see.” Somewhat reluctantly I accepted the little green creature. It swivelled its eyes in my direction. After a while it started creeping up my shirt sleeve, very slowly, reflecting on every trembling step.
“Thanks, boetie. What’s your name?”
“Piet Snot, Oom.” I should have expected as much.
He followed me for some distance before running off on his own. I went on alone, with my small green charm.
Smell of Eucalyptus
Up along the nearest slope, past the long ostrich pen where the grey females were brooding on the nests while the flamboyant males stood guard at the hedge, fluttering their long transvestite lashes. From there I entered the bluegum wood. It was the first time I’d set foot there, but after the dream of two nights before there was something on my mind I wanted to clear up. The undergrowth among the trees was very dense, and in some spots it was tough going. I actually found it reassuring, as it confirmed beyond all doubt that only in a bloody dream could I have found my way so easily through the wood on the night of the full moon.
After the day’s heat there was a heavy smell of eucalyptus in the air. It was as quiet as hell. Not a mouse or a rat scuttling in the shrubbery, not an insect among the trees. Only the crackling of twigs underfoot as I walked.
At last the trees began to open up. I must be approaching the top edge of the forest, I thought. But it turned out to be a large clearing among the bluegums. I recognised the spot immediately. No doubt at all. Something long and thin, like girl’s fingers, clutched at my heart. This was fucking impossible.
It was still very quiet. Only the heavy eucalyptus smell settled on me like a headache. I started looking around in the clearing. Here and there were broken branches and bunches of leaves, some dry, others merely wilted. But it proved nothing. Of course not.
As I reached the far edge of the clearing I saw something moving among the trees, like a flitting shadow.
It was Henta. Still wearing her church dress, buttoned up right to her chin. But now she was barefoot, and her long dark-red hair freed from the two tight plaits which that morning had drawn her eyes into slits.
“Afternoon, Oom.” Something seductive in her voice. This child was much too knowing for her years.
“Hello, Henta. What are you doing in the wood?”
“It’s where we come to play, Oom.”
I swallowed, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “What kind of play?”
“Oom saw us mos, the night before last.”
“Henta, don’t talk shit to me.” Not the kind of language to use in front of a bloody child, but she’d asked for it.
Below Her Chin
She gave a little smile. And she came a step closer. Her cheeks were very red, her eyes unnervingly bright.
“What do you want now?” I asked cautiously. One could never be sure with this one.
“I got something to show you.”
“Yes?” Now I was really getting worried.
Without warning she leaned forward, clasped the hem of her dress in both hands, and raised it to right below her chin. Under the dress she was naked.
On
my forearm I could feel the chameleon raise a foot. I glanced down. One of its round eyes was fixed, expressionless, on me, the other on her.
I’ve never thought twice about taking my chances: God knows, there have been few enough over the years; and I don’t easily refuse what comes for free. But that Sunday afternoon I suppose I was down to my last scruple. And in a way I feel perversely proud that I managed to keep my cool. It was almost with a kind of wryness, even sadness, that I said, “No, my child, I don’t think this is such a good idea.” For a moment she didn’t move. Then dropped the hem of her dress. It’s hard to describe the expression on her face. Angry, crestfallen, embarrassed? But there was something else as well, something that fell through the gaps in my vocabulary, something darker, of which for all I know I understood as little as she did.
Terrible Innocence
Back in my room I placed the chameleon on one of Tant Poppie’s medicinal twigs and stood it in a tall thin castor oil bottle on the wash-stand beside the ewer. I lit a cigarette but stubbed it out after a pull or two. Then I lay down on my bed, aware only of a feeling of emptiness.
From far back I remembered the first girl who’d played Henta’s game with me. Maureen. The terrible innocence of it all. And how the next day her parents had arrived at our house with their church faces, and how Pa had belted me that evening so that for three nights I had to sleep on my fucking stomach. In a way everything that happened afterwards was somehow second-hand.
Hairy Shoulder
And later my thoughts inevitably turned to Sylvia, to the fuck-up we’d made of our life together. Where had it all begun? Surely we’d had good times too, once. Perhaps she got pregnant too soon. Six months after the wedding, just weeks before we were to leave for Europe to paint the place red. I still remember the farewell party. Jesus, the look in her eyes when she danced with Twinkletoes van Tonder. But I wasn’t going to show the chip on the hairy shoulder. God forbid. Pity I had a bit too much to drink though, she too, for different reasons, and when we tumbled into bed at home at three or four in the morning, we fucked like dogs and slept like hogs, and only in the morning realised we hadn’t used anything. The atmosphere was as acid as the vinegar she recklessly used to douche herself, blistering the inside of her cunt, and too late anyway, the harm had been done. Three weeks later the testing strip proved what it wasn’t supposed to.
All plans suspended, she cancelled her scholarship, I dropped my registration for Ph. D. and took the fucking job at the newspaper, we needed the measly few rand a month extra. After Louise’s birth sex was no longer an escape, except when we were either too mad or too drunk to care. How various the ways of saying, ‘I love you’, once you’ve mastered the fucking grammar of perversity. Like any kind of torture it’s just a matter of refinement. Marius was the final, unforeseen, product of our years of open warfare. Sylvia moved into the spare bedroom and began to spend her days, with Louise in tow, in malls and things, running up bills for clothes and shit I couldn’t pay for. I turned to whores and the odd little sordid fling with secretaries and cub reporters until I got slapped with a warning for sexual harassment. And Sylvia laid on her own affairs, more or less discreet to start with, except she made damn sure I’d find out when it would hurt most exquisitely. It was worse when she bedded my chief editor. The cherry, no pun intended, was bringing one of my juniors home. God, I can still hear the caterwauling of her orgasm, real or faked (did I ever learn the difference, did she?). After that I couldn’t care a fuck any more. Syphilis of the soul, right?
What’s left is just this stupid sense of betrayal all the way. But who by whom? Each time you kiss a little bit of yourself goodbye.
All I know is that I’ve never had a way with women. Who was to blame? Okay, I’m not trying to duck anything. But I mean, who ever prepared me for it? Ma with the ciggie stuck to her lower lip, the curlers in her hair, the candlewick gown? And who never intervened when Pa came home pissed beyond description on Saturday nights to pluck Dolf and me from our bed for a thrashing? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. An Esau with hair on his body is supposed to take it on the chin. But I just don’t know. Woman, woman: a fucking wilderness for me.
Cakes and Tarts
IN A WAY this was just the beginning of the events of that weird Sunday. Because after the children it was the women’s turn. Tant Poppie was barely home again when they started coming: the women with their cakes and tarts and daughters. The righteous sisters of the congregation, five or six of them in a row (and several more during the following days), each with a special gift from the oven, or a jar of jam, a basket of quinces or pomegranates, a roll of mebos or a bowl of honey, to welcome the stranger from outer space in their midst. And to present their nubile daughters, right, bedecked in fucking frills and embroidery, with ribbons in their hair.
The first mother asked without any beating about the bush, “Do you have a wife of your own?”
“I live alone,” I said. Had I known what was to follow I’d have sworn with my hand on my heart that I was happily married to an angelic wife to whom I’d pledged eternal devotion before Almighty God. (Whether it would have made any bloody difference is a moot point.)
“Well, that’s good then. This is Lettie. I hope you like her.”
In one way or another the news must have spread, because the visitors who followed came straight to the point.
“Here’s a milk tart and this is my daughter, may your going in and your coming out be blessed of the Lord.”
After the encounter in the bluegum wood these situations were easier to handle. For fear of giving offence I didn’t openly turn down any offer. But I explained that I’d come to their valley to write up their history, which would keep me so busy for the foreseeable future that it would be hard to find time for anything else.
They didn’t appear to feel rebuffed; but the slumbering look below their half-mast eyelids was worrying, as if they’d coaxed me into an agreement without allowing me to check the fine print.
So much for the women.
Their procession was interrupted by the insistent ringing of the church bell, and in a way the evening service, of which I remember next to nothing, was a welcome escape. The atmosphere was quite special, I must say: the brooding dark space lit only by the lanterns the people had brought with them. But the rest was just a blur. Grandpa Lukas wasn’t there. Nor, as far as I could see, was the girl Emma. Unless she was seated too far behind me in the women’s block, because I couldn’t turn round to stare too openly. Also, I felt tired and headachy. All I needed now was to be left alone in my room with my thoughts.
Blood Sports
But there was no rest for the wicked. As I was undressing in the corner nearest the window—I must say, I found the absence of curtains rather annoying, and I sleep in the buff—there was a knock on the thick panes. Outside I could see a lantern, surrounded by a number of savage male faces with beards and hats, and tufts of hair sprouting from ears and noses. My first thought was that they’d come to drag me out and string me up the nearest tree: for all I knew Henta had given them a different version of our story, or otherwise one of my female visitors had demanded vengeance for an imagined slight. But it turned out to be a hunt, and they had come to take me along.
I’ve never been a blood sports fan: not from any scruples, but because I’m just too fucking lazy. I’d much rather spend an afternoon in front of the TV with a six-pack at my elbow, or on a special occasion on the railway stand at Newlands. Participation I prefer to leave to others.
But that night’s invitation was not to be turned down. I don’t think mere was a subtext to it (“Come along, or else…”); but the faces in front of my window in the blustering light of the lantern, with their ancient rifles and kieries and clubs and knives in their gnarled fists, prompted me to make up my mind pretty quickly.
There were five of them: the carpenter Jos Joseph, whose fragrant dusting of shavings and sawdust appeared to lure gnats at night; the shoemaker Petrus Tatters, gaunt a
nd angular like a scarecrow with flapping coattails; the glowering Jurg Water with his heavy limbs and his purple nose like a misshapen turnip; Isak Smous, small and busy on his short legs, his bald head shining like an ostrich egg in the moonlight; and then the morose Lukas Death in his crumpled suit, black against the black of the night, so that his face appeared like a floating mask. Together, they looked like an exhibition at an agricultural show. And they would not have won first prize.
Man Among Men
Had Lukas Death not been with them I might still have looked for an excuse: but his presence was somehow reassuring. He was at least more congenial than the rest.
The group was clearly fired up by the prospect of a nocturnal hunt. And we’d barely stepped off Tant Poppie’s stoep when a large rifle was pressed into my hands. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about firearms, but my father used to have one of those which he occasionally took on a springbok hunt. As far as I know my grandfather had brought it back from the Anglo-Boer War after refusing to give it up when peace was declared (which cost him a year in prison). A Mauser. Strange what a thrill it sent through me. A man among men. The hair on my body stood up like a dog’s, and I could feel my balls contract. Onward, Christian soldiers.
As if Jurg Water could sense what I felt, he announced with deep-throated gusto, “This is how our ancestors used to advance against the enemy.”
I took the gap: “Did they have many enemies then?”
“Our people were always beset by enemies,” he declared with great conviction. “One can never relax one’s vigilance.”
“What kinds of enemies?”
“Every kind you can think of,” said Jos Joseph through his cloud of gnats. “Everybody’s hand has always been against us.”
“Were there enemies waiting down here in the valley when your people first arrived?”
“This place was as empty as the world before God started working on it,” said Lukas Death. “But that doesn’t mean a man can relax. There were always enemies trying to come in from outside, you see. In the early days the Cape government tried to get us out of here. They once sent a whole commando, hundreds of armed men, many of them heathen coloured pandoers. But that was in the time of Strong-Lukas, and he was a fighter like Gideon in the Bible. With only five men to help him he wiped out that whole army and threw their bodies down the cliffs for the vultures. You can still see his name chiselled on the Bushman Krans. I tell you, there’s always the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”
