by Mark Behr
‘What about... “The Scent of Ejaculation and Oranges”.’
Our laughter swathed by the thick leaves, the branches heavy with the last fruit of late autumn. Somewhere, higher up in the Berg, winter waited.
‘You must try and go for it a little longer,’ he said, catching my eye. I looked away. ‘You’ll be able to come, I’m telling you. Begin . . . ad libitum. Keep it amoroso . . . Next time, just relax and don’t think of anything except what I’m doing . . . Then affrettando, agitato, oh, oh—’’
‘It’s too much! It should just be oranges and then the poem must show it’s really about love.’
‘Changing the topic, Karl. Anyway. The scent of oranges.’
‘Not scent. Smell. The smell of oranges.’
‘What’s wrong with scent; it’s far more poetic to say scent.’
‘It’s a sissy word. Like something homos would say.’
‘Tchaikovsky was a homo. And Britten. And Beethoven kissed Liszt a long sloppy one. Jesus Christ, what do you think we are!’
‘Stop saying that, Dominic.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with you, now?’
‘You’re blaspheming again and I don’t like that other word.’
‘I don’t care what anyone says.’
‘Jissis Dominic!’ I heard the pitch of my own voice rising. ‘If anyone ever finds out. Last year . . .’ I broke off the words, the thought, aware of reaching into a place of which he knew only a skewed lie. Somewhere I would never go again in language.
‘Yes! Last year Almeida told you he had heard some Seniors were caned and threatened with expulsion for fucking each other. Probably that ugly Harding and Reyneke. We saw them, it has to be them, so what? You couldn’t stand those two anyway.’
‘You don’t understand, Dom.’
‘Sorry that I’m so thick, Karl! I’ve made a terrible mistake. And don’t worry, I’ve got better things to do than run around and tell everyone you’re my boyfriend.’
‘I have a girlfriend.’
‘Alette? Oh for God’s sake. One letter a week never a lover made, if you ask me.’
‘You know very well were . . . going out.’
‘Do you kiss her? No! And does she lie with you under the orange trees? No! Does she try and make you come? She doesn’t, Karl, does she!’
‘Oranges don’t grow on the coast. And she’ll do the other stuff, one day, when were older. And I did it with my cousin. I mean, I stuck it right in.’
‘Fine, but you don’t have to stick it in to be homo. Anyway, in the meantime were homos.’
‘Please stop saying that, Dominic. Please, please . . . Promise me?’
‘It’s not like I’m going to run and tell the whole school, you fool. I also don’t want to be caned. Did you really do it with your cousin?’
27
At night my parents and occasionally Bernice would take the set of small silver tweezers from the cupboard and place them on the side of the bath before lifting themselves down, in front of me. FFuffff! went the gas geyser as they regulated the temperature by turning on the hot, then the cold taps. Our bodies copper against the white enamel tub.
‘Okay, let’s row!’They’d call and with cupped hands we swirled the water into a whirlpool around the sides of the bath. When the hot-water tap was opened, I anticipated the moment the warm water arrived from the front, reached my legs and churned around my back, heating my waist.
Then, half raising themselves from the tub, they would turn to face me and say: ‘Time to do those little calabashes!’
Water dripping from my warm body, I stood in front of them as they took the tweezers and with intricate care began pulling off thetiny pepper ticks that had gathered in my loins and in the folds of the scrotum during another day of running through the long grass. To prevent one of the pin-sized heads from staying beneath the skin, a dab of Vaseline might be applied to the tick’s torso, the oil forcing the red speck to relinquish its grip.
28
With the piano, he sang, emulated instruments while his hands continued before his chest; clarinet taking over from oboe; left hand plunging at us, moving us up by step D E F sharp, the change of harmony, his voice, altering tenor to falsetto again the clarinet, melodic strand, enfolding ours, voices change, Aunt Siobhain’s voice, on top of Stephanie, ballet of blue cranes, Patty Pierce, dolls, Camelot on the beach, classroom in St Lucia, Juffirou Sang, Coolie Mary’s son brown filafooi with James sucking it in Mary’s kaya, candle and lemons under bush, Old Danny Boy, balcony Louis Botha airport, boys are not allowed in girls’ bedrooms to get up to mischief, not allowed to sit on Bokkie’s bedspreads Lena and Bernice have periods panties stained brown will they have babies, Mervyn laughs and says no must do It to have babies no boys don’t have periods wet dreams are not periods, Blue Lagoon they came together and there was a baby, running from Phinias no from Jim’s hut, hairy baboon spider in footpath, crying, Suz and Chaka, doing it, getting stuck Bok sprays them with green garden hose they come loose, men on moon at night outside on blanket by marula tree, Americans cleverest beat Russians, terrorists, burn Bibles poor Christians behind Iron Curtain, Christians banished to the snows of Siberia, must pray for forgiveness, what am I doing Dear Jesus forgive me, still love Father will read Bible, must think of it, in excelis deo, will get him back bastard, speaking in tongues, Gloria, Gloria, Cassandra’s foal, chestnut coat, all the ooze and the afterbirth Cassandra licking, Lukas laughing so happy about the beautiful foal, huge opening when the legs came out, then the body and head last, thought dead, no, she licks and licks and on its little legs like bending fingers, must concentrate, not let Cilliers see lapses, have not heard, open mouth almost wrong word, keep eyes on him, concentrate Karl, concentrate, will be good, he smiles piece over, how did we get here?
Having heard barely a single note of my own or from the choir around me.
29
Inside hung the thick scents of sisal poles, thatch and creosote in which the timber beams and uprights were regularly dosed against wood-borer and general decay.
Movement in and around the water never ceased: the brown tip of a submerged stick was a turtles head barely breaking the surface; dragonflies bright red, yellow, green, blue helicopters hovering, dipping their abdomens into the surface and bouncing up, again hanging with vibrating wings, mating in mid-air like they’re giving each other piggybacks; white-winged butterflies in rows at the waters edge. The coming and going of birds: starlings, regal blue shining satin as they bathed and chattered, ruffling feathers and splashing in the small pools formed in the mud by hooves; swallows, white-chested and redchested, briefly settling to pick up mud for their nests, then darting up, sweeping over the pan and still in flight dipping their beaks and sending ripples over the surface; malachite kingfishers, silent and almost invisible in the reeds, waiting, their telescopic focus below the waters surface, down, the sharp beak scooping up tadpole. Rare though it was to see them, in the peeling green branches of an overhanging fever tree or on the dry white thorn, a fish eagle, its white collar and copper coat aglimmer where it waited for bigger fish to move; diving head first wings streamlined to its side, striking the water in the same instant unfurling its wings that rowed backwards, putting it in reverse,elevating, struggling with the black torso of a barbel, sprays of water as the fish floundered and the burdened bird winged off, settled back on its perch, the fish still struggling in the claws; and then, the razor beak ripping into the black skin, bringing its prey to shuddering passivity.
Bube-hide perched over the water beside a thick bush surrounding the pan. Before the drought the thatched structure with its wooden platform resting on poles cast its reflection to the middle of the glassy surface. During the week and in the off season we spent days there and at Masinga hide just to the south, while Bok with Jonas and Boy did maintenance. Wood had to be treated, sections of the roof rethatched, the winding sisal passage leading into the hide secured with reams of wire, garbage bins emptied and occasionally plastic and bot
tles collected from where some unthinking tourist had littered the parking lot The network of game paths leading to the pan were subject to a weekly inspection: poachers, knowing the whereabouts of the water-holes, employed the paths to set their most fecund traps.
At dusk and dawn, game came and went mongoose dashing for the water in a straight line; vervet monkeys and troops of baboons, barking, cajoling and tumbling in the dust; warthogs, snorting and rolling till their flanks were black and shiny and they trotted off into the undergrowth with tails vertical antennae above them; duiker, ears twitching, eyes alert dainty. Heard from afar — like fingers flicking the inside of mouths — zebra announced their approach with the wildebeest, legs thin and nervous, retreating at the merest suspicion of danger. Ah, but the arrival of giraffe! Only twice in the years at Mkuzi do I recall seeing them at a hide. An inkling of movement above the tree-tops and I put my hand on Bokkie s arm, pointing with my stare. Then, if I was correct small heads began popping up above the leaves. The closer they came the more I could see of the magnificent necks, moving from side to side, pausing, turning lazily to gaze sidelong at something beyond my view. Crowned kings and queens, they glidedinto full view from the bush, flanks quivering where tick-birds clung, legs bending at distended knees and flicking backwards in what was for me the most elegant movement of the bush. Heads turning, huge eyes intently on the hide, and I so hoping they could see me or simply know I was there, loving them, doing nothing to hurt or scare them. If from the distance there were sounds from Bok or the boys — digging, chopping, talking — they tarried before moving down to the waters rim. Spreading the legs as wide apart as I imagined they could possibly go without slipping, splitting; moving weight from side to side, finding a foothold; tipping necks forward; upper lips rippled at the surface and nostrils opened and closed while they sipped for what to me was eternity.
The three of us inside the Land Rovers cabin were silent while we drove back to Mbanyana at night with Boy and Jonas on the back. When it was cold, Bokkie said she wished we had an enclosed vehicle or even just a tarpaulin so that the arme skepsels didn’t have to sit out in the wind. The beams roved along the sandy tracks, sweeping the dry bush each time we bounced through a hole or turned a corner. I fell asleep on Bokkie’s lap and would not awake till next morning when she told me Bok had carried me in to the stretcher. If awake by the time we got home, I watched as she prepared supper or hovered around Bok sipping his Black Label and listening on the wireless to the Afrikaans service of Radio South Africa.
After supper they sat beside each other on the brown couch, he with his beer, she with a shandy — half Black Label, half lemonade. He smoked Paul Revere and she Rothman’s Special Filter in the blue and white pack. When the radio wasn’t playing and the hissing of the hurricane lamp not too loud, you could hear them inhale and exhale, or the phu of their lips releasing the filter, and the cry and call of jackal or at times the cackling laughter’of hyena. Bok went to the Blaupunkt on the stuffed elephant foot and wound the tip of a coil onto one turntable and inserted the full roll on the other. Bokkie saidshe missed a little boere-musiek and she would write and ask Oupa Liebenberg or Aunt Lena to maybe send some. I was allowed to press the white perspex button that said PLAY and immediately Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Mantovani or a Strauss waltz passed through the reed walls, out into the bush. When the Blaupunkt’s batteries started going flat the music began to drag and Bok turned it off. Next day Bokkie placed the batteries in a neat row on top of the roof, where Lossie would be unable to get hold of them. The bird was forever swallowing things from around the house or the kitchen when the wall was up: bits of rope, cups, cudery, my Dinkies, socks from the washing line. I spent hours scratching through his droppings with a stick to find my little green Lancia or to see if Bok’s spanners would turn up. When he imbibed Bokkie’s ball of knitting wool, half a day went trying to get him to stand still while we pulled at the wool that came out of his mouth like a long purple worm.
They read to me from the Kinder BybeL Of Abraham and Isaac if I promised not to cry; of Esther, brave and beautiful in a crimson cloak; of Solomon and his wisdom suggesting the cutting up of a baby; of Jesus sprawled bleeding from the cross while the Jews jibed; the tribe of Judah; Joshua at Jericho and the bad woman Rahab who saved the day; of Moses so magnificent in parting the Red Sea; the dreadful plague with frogs in your food and malaria mosquitoes killing Egypt’s children; of Joseph and his coat with colours that didn’t even appear in the rainbow; of Potiphar’s wicked wife; of Jezebel; David and his defeat of the Philistines; the miracle of water into wine.
I knelt at the stretcher for prayers. Earlier I had repeated after them but later did it without their help. I prayed for our family and for Lena and Bernice in boarding school in Hluhluwe. The older I got the longer the list of people to pray for: Dademan and Mumdeman at Charters, Oupa and Ouma Liebenberg in Klerksdorp, Uncle Michael and Auntie Siobhain in Amanzimtoti, all my cousins on both sides, the souls of Great-Grandfather and -Grandmother De Man, GreatGrandfather and -Grandmother Liebenberg, Auntie Lena in
Klerksdorp, Unde Coen and his girlfriend Mandy. I was terrified of leaving someone off my list lest I unknowingly contribute to death, suffering or bad luck. Unsure whether I was expected to pray for Groot-Oom Klaas, I none the less sometimes did, asking God to forgive Groot-Oom Klaas for turning into a tramp and casting disgrace and shame over the Liebenberg family. Bok eventually taught me the ‘Our Father in Afrikaans and English, because he said it basically covered everything and in that way one was sure not to leave anyone or anything out.
If the Blaupunkt’s batteries had not gone flat, I could hear them from my stretcher, over the wail of jackal, and the weeping of the nightjars, doing the polka or the two-step or the waltz, and I imagined them, again, Ralph the prince and Katie Cinderella, floating over a marble floor in a country called Vienna.
I developed, so Bokkie said and I still recall, an insatiable appetite for story-telling by age three. About the time she and Bernice began teaching me to read and write. I can also remember Lena’s fifth birthday, when Molly Hancox brought her children to have a party at Mbanyana. I cannot remember that it was Molly Hancox for sure, but the recollection is of a party with two kids who are not cousins from the city. The only other white children living in Mkuzi were the Hancoxes from Southern Gate, so, to my mind, it has to have been them. It was Lena’s birthday of the year before she went to boarding school, which means fragments of conscious memory from around two and a half: Lena quietly walks up behind a laughing dove that has come to sit on the red ground outside the lounge wall. She bends and picks it up. It sits quietly in her hands while the two children and I draw around her to see. The children want to take turns to hold the bird, but I implore my sister to let it go, to see if it can fly and go back to its nest. When I want to cry, Lena raises her hands, unfolds her fingers, and the dove flaps its wings and flies off into the bush. We all watch its flight. And that’s where the memory ends.
Other stories, told and retold at my request, of our lives in Tanganjika, of our great-grandparents leaving the Union in 1910 to trek to East Africa to get away from the British who had won the Second War of Liberation. And Oupa and Ouma Liebenberg who were poor farmers in the Molopo before poverty forced them to Klerksdorp. As much as these family sagas for which I depended on the willingness of adults to tell, I loved to hear the stories from the three thick books Aunt Lena had given us. These were The Tales of Grimm, The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, and The Arabian Nights. I also remember, from somewhere around the time of Lena going to boarding school, she and I lying on either side of Bokkie while she read us Hansel and Gretel Bokkie broke off reading mid-sentence when the story had been barely begun — because I was already whimpering.
‘Mommy’s not going to carry on reading if you cry, Karl,’ she said, closing the book over her index finger. ‘We haven’t even got to the sad part, and already you’re crying.’ I controlled myself, wanting to hear the rest
and knowing Lena would be furious if the reading was terminated because of my tears. I managed, for a while at least, not to cry. But by the time Hansel is imprisoned in the cage, being fed to fatten by the witch, I sobbed openly and Bokkie tried to console: ‘It’s only a story, my child. It’s only a story.’There is little memory of this incident other than my tears and Bokkie’s words.
Then, from among these I so loved to hear, I adored even more the stories within the story of Scheherazade, the mistress of the Sultan who deferred death by telling tales that would never be concluded by morning so that her execution was eternally postponed. My book didn’t say that that’s how it worked, but Bernice, who’d heard another version, told me all about Scheherazade. And Bernice, who already knew how many days there were in a year, once calculated for me: two years and 271 days. I thought Scheherazade certainly the cleverest woman in the entire world. Once I could read for myself, I frequently put off the last page or so of the fables, waiting rather for the following day. Then I would read on, makingbelieve that the Sultan would have had my head had I concluded the other story too soon.
Our cousins came to the bush with Unde Michael and Aunt Siobhain. We got our first Christmas tree: a central stem of aluminium with fold-out wire branches covered in plastic pine-like leaves, about half a metre tall and mounted on a tripod. From two cake tins came the most beautiful decorations imaginable. Silver and golden balls, reams of silver, gold and copper streamers to drape over the green plastic branches. Small Santa Claus, stars of Bethlehem, leaves and red berries of holly, triangles, squares, little boxes in tinsel to hang from the branches. And, a fairy — an angel, stupid, Lena said — in a white satin dress with a wand and a star on its tip, to be placed at the top of the tree.
