by Mark Behr
Back in my bed, my hand was over my nose; bringing them with me. Sweat, squirt, soap, sawdust, horse: an ensemble of secret smells. I breathed into my right palm where it was always strongest, while with the left, awkwardly, I brought myself to another climax. I did not wipe it as they were want to do. Dragged my fingers up, scooping it into the fold, smearing my cheeks, my forehead, my lips, tasting or smelling myself: different from either of them. In this place we eat the same food, drink from the same taps, but still we smell and taste or that other sense different, I thought. And when about to fall asleep, I willed myself into the dream: I glided over a veld of brown grass that blows in the breeze, at first in all directions, and I know I’m gliding but I don’t know what or who or how many I am. Then, if the focus, the concentration was deliberate, the breeze takes all the grass in one direction, the same direction as I am moving, and it goes faster and faster and sleep takes me. When I do not concentrate — underwater breath lungs bursting fire I’m English almonds that woman receptionist garage full of curios breaking Bokkie’s pots Bokkie made masks to sell for money Dominic Both Sides Now bilingual Arusha, Oljorro, Kenia ship this mark on my forehead Bokkie says is from when I fell on the Kenia no Kenya ship when we came out, can’t remember too small maybe two, fell off Camelot, Lena, giggles, dragged by Camelot, Simba licking blood off Lena’s legs, Bernice puts disinfectant, lying to Ouma, Mumdeman and Dademan no Dademan was dead, cemetery, all crying, family, High on the Hill with the Lonely Goat Herd lei odelei, who is the girl in the pale pink coat, blue dress, fairy’s silver star of tin foil, fairy’s star, fairy-tale, the fairy’s tail, the fair tail, dance with Stephanie, ballet, when she was the cat on the stage, Siamese Cat, over Bok’s dead body, can Dademan see me, must pray, dear Jesus, let Dademan understand me, not think, don’t think about it, bury it in grave, ghosts, no ghosts exist, pagan beliefs, irrational, cannot see from heaven, unspeakable, will still go to heaven, hell, no, no, not think, think of something else, forget, forget it, over, past, finish en klaar — the grass remains tangled, chunky, blowing in all directions, untidy. Then the dream would not take me and I could cast about in the sheets, unable to fall asleep for hours.
In the mornings I stooped to brush my teeth and’it had virtually all flaked from my face; here and there around where the hair began on the forehead and temples it was like skin peeling from sunburn. I washed it with only water; no soap. I smelt them on me through Sunday church and the terrors of burning in hell, or, for the entire day in class. Breathing now into my left, the right struggling with trigonometry, fractions; or doing battle in the oblique trenches of language. On the fine blue lines that veined the blank pages with their pink margins. Translating Latin. Memorising the vocab. Thirty new words a week; and adjectives with the nominative singular the same for all genders: felix, felicem, felicis, felici. Learning a new language.
2
Boy stole Bok’s revolver and is sitting in jail in Matubatuba. Now Jonas goes on patrol and trail alone with Bok. Boy must go to court. They say Boy will go to jail. Boy stole the revolver and was hiding in the location near Empangeni when the police caught him. We go to court to see how they send Boy to jail. Magistrate says Boy was going to help the poachers but Interpreter says Boy says that’s not true. Interpreter says Boy says he was going to sell the revolver for money, he was not helping poachers. Interpreter says Boy says he wanted money for his wife and children. No one knows Boy has a wife and kids. He’s lying says Bok. I sit in the middle between Bok and Bokkie and it’s hot and sweaty where my legs are on the wooden bench and there’s nobody else in the court. Everyone doesn’t speak and only the Magistrate must ask questions and Interpreter says into Zulu and Boy talks to Interpreter in Zulu and Interpreter tells Magistrate in English what Boy said in Zulu. Then Boy starts crying and Magistrate asks Interpreter what’s wrong with Boy. Interpreter asks Boy something in Zulu and Boy cries and says something in Zulu and then Interpreter tells Magistrate that Boy says his wife and children need money and how are his children going to eat if he goes to jail? Magistrate is sweating on his bald pink head like a plucked pigeon. Magistrate says he will show mercy because it’s the first time Boy has stolen. Boy will get twelve cuts. Bok blows through his nose and shakes his head. Boy stops crying and he doesn’t look at us when they take him away. Bok says there’s no justice in this world. Boy won’t be a game guard any more and he’s only getting twelve cuts for stealing a firearm. What’s becoming of this country? Going the same way as Tanganyika. Maybe it was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
I’m six and it’s time I go to school. I want to go to school but I hate that I must leave Umfolozi and I must go to boarding school in Hluhluwe. The Parks Board boss Dr Ian Player tells Bok he’s transferred to St Lucia. Dr Player is the brother of the golfer Gary Player. Gary Player is rich and famous. Save The White Rhino is nearly finished because maybe the white rhino is saved. We will live right across the lake from Dademan and Mademan in Charters Creek. I can go and visit there every weekend with the boat. Now I don’t mind leaving here so much because now I will go to day school in Matubatuba. Matubatuba sounds nice. I say it over and over to Jonas. Ma-tu-ba-tu-ba, Matu-batu-ba. Jonas must stay here in Umfolozi. Now no one sleeps on Boy’s bed. Boy is gone and I’m scared he’ll come and kill us in our sleep. I say to Jonas we will come and visit. Bernice and Lena can come and live at home again and I’ll catch a bus with them to go to school every day. I’m getting school uniforms for boys like Lena and Bernice’s for girls. To get shoes on my feet Bokkie makes me sit with my feet in her red bucket full of warm water with salts to makemy kaffir heels and toes soft and not any more like leather like Chaka’s impis. I am getting shoes because you need shoes for school and church and Sunday school. I’ve never had shoes and always thorns in my feet. When a long white thorn went in at the bottom and came out at the top it broke off and Bokkie put green Sunlight soap with sugar smashed and stuck it on the top hole and bottom hole with a big plaster to draw out the thorn and the poison. Now I won’t have more thorns because I’m a big boy going to school in Matubatuba . . . Matubatuba sounds nice. I say it over and over . . .
We pack the truck. Chaka and Suz kill a big waterbuck up at Mpila. Camp. They grab it by the throat and strangle. Jonas brings Chaka and Suz full of blood by the collars to tell Bok. Tourists saw it all happening at Mpila Camp. It’s a very big thing. Dogs killing wild animals. Worse in front of tourists. Scandal, says Bok. Bok holds Chaka and Suz by the front legs and swings and beats them against the wall. It is not good enough. If a dog kills animals once it will kill animals again. Chaka and Suz must be put to sleep. Put down it’s called. Bok goes down to the office and I sit outside by the water tank stroking poor Chaka and Suz. I tell Chaka and Suz to be very brave. They will go to doggy heaven and I’ll see them there one day. Bok comes with the injection. I start crying but so that Bok doesn’t see. I ask if maybe he will not put them to sleep. Bokkie calls from inside and says I must come inside I cannot watch it. Bok says no, the boy watches everything and the boy can watch this too. Bokkie shouts the boy’s going to have nightmares and Bok says the boy’s a boy and he must see the world the way it is. Now I don’t cry. Bokkie’s eyes water when she looks at Chaka and Suz. She goes into the kitchen. Bok pats Chaka’s head. Bok’s fingers are dirty from packing the truck. I hold Chaka’s head in my lap. Bok looks like he’s going to cry. Tears in Bok’s eyes. Bok injects the medicine. Chaka stops looking at me. His eyes go like glass, like stuffed animal heads. Then Suz. And Jonas comes to watch because Suz loved Jonas from the trails. She cries. And Jonas shakes his face and wipes his eyes and walks to his kaya. Bok sticks in the needle. Istroke Suz s little head. Then she’s dead. Bok gets up and goes to the fence and looks out over the valley to the White Umfolozi. I go and stand next to him. His mouth is thin. We put Chaka and Suz in brown mealie bags and Jonas digs two holes and I help him. We put the bags inside and I help Jonas to fill them up. At night I cry a little bit. I don’t say the Our Father. I
pray big. I pray Jesus take care of my dear Chaka and my dear Suz and please Jesus forgive them the water-buck and also look after the waterbuck. And don’t let Boy come and kill us because he’s angry. In the morning I go to the graves. Bokkie says when someone dies you put flowers on the grave. I pick flowers and grasses and yellow monkey-apples and put them on Chaka and Suz’s graves. Bokkie asks why monkey-apples and I say it’s an offering and Bokkie says were not heathen who make offerings so I throw away the monkey-apples and put more mauve tree wisteria it’s mauve not purple that Jonas picks when I ask him because its too high for me. I take the Kinder Bybel and sit and read about Jacob’s ladder at the grave. I ask Bokkie why we didn’t stuff Chaka and Suz like kudu heads and buffalo heads and Grant’s gazelle. Bokkie says that’s for wild animals, not for pets you love.
At St Lucia we will live at the sea in the ranger’s house. And we can go fishing and see the flamingoes. I will go to Sunday school and to church for the first time. I’m going to the big world.
The best of everything ever happens: Willy Hancox gives me a foal, a Palomino. His name is Camelot and he’s still brown like all baby Palominos and he’ll turn like honey when he gets older. Camelot can come to St Lucia because there’s a paddock. Bok says he’ll teach me how to ride when Camelot is old enough.
3
Seasons on the Natal coast came and went, quietly and inconspicuously, without the show of the Berg. Summer seemed to me to exist all year round with the only real change the drop in humidity and summers afternoon showers. Returning to Amanzimtoti at the end of June 1975 it had been to the new house on Bowen Street, the first i we’d owned since leaving Tanzania. Bok borrowed money from Oupa Liebenberg for a deposit, but still, the bank owned the house, of course, even though in Bok’s name. It would take me about eighteen months to fully grasp the concept. Bok’s curios had been thriving for six months and I was elated to be in Toti — now in a home with a swimming pool, my own bedroom and wall-to-wall carpeting. If only Lukas and Dom could come and visit, so they could see I had my own room. Bokkie refused to have a maid and continued cleaning and , servicing the house and its running herself. The house sparkled. In spite of Prime Minister Vorster’s belief that it was a communist plot, South Africa was getting television and Bok wanted to be the first to have a set. Evenings Alette would come over and we’d all watch the test broadcasts and the seven o’clock news read on alternate nights I think by Nigel Caine and Michael De Morgan in English and Heinrich Marnitz and Friedel Hansen in Afrikaans. Afterwards I’d walk Alette home to Dan Pienaar and maybe pop in to say hello to Juffrou Sang and Prof.
There was a slight unpleasantness because of my school report: since going to boarding school eighteen months before I no longer came first in class. My marks had dropped from the nineties into the low seventies. The marks, in and of themselves, seemed not to worry Bok and Bokkie unduly. But there was one sentence on my June report that sent my mother first into a rage and then, worse, into a silence. In the report’s comments section, Miss Roos had written: ‘Karl is a pleasure to have in class, yet, he consistently underachieves, never getting the marks he should. If he can learn to control his uitgelatenheid, I have little doubt that his academic performance would better reflect his academic ability.’ Neither Bokkie nor I understood the word uitgelate so she sent me to fetch the Afrikaans/English dictionary. Uitgelatenheid: boisterousness, elation, exuberance, exultation, in high spirits, loud, rampant. Then, I had to look under each of these in Bernices Verklarende Woordeboek. The closest to Miss Roos s intention — according to Bokkie — was obviously: loud, rampant; uncontrolled. When Bok came home, that was what uitgelatenheid had come to mean: Your son is rampant and uncontrolled. Your son is turning into a wash-out. My father shook his head and said that unless my grades went up he’d take me out of the school. I tried to hide my elation, that I had seen the gap, that this could be my passport away from a place which I increasingly detested. At the end of my first year in the Berg I had asked them to take me out, and they’d refused, saying that being away from home was making me a stronger boy. Where you can’t hang onto Bokkie’s apron strings, Lena had said. Now, after Miss Roos’s remarks, I suspected that a weak report was my ticket home. And how badly, desperately, at that moment, more than ever before, did I want to be at home. The events of the previous six months, while never contemplated, lurked like invisible spectres in my mind. And then, Bokkie went silent. With me. That I, her star child, was turning into a wash-out, was driving her to muteness. With me. To Lena, Bernice and Bok she spoke as if nothing were wrong. But I was invisible. I washed the dishes and tried to help prepare meals when Bok wasn’t home — that didn’t help. I walked over to the church where she was gardening, asked whether I could trim the edges of the lawn, she only nodded at my presence and said: ‘You must do as you please, Karl.’ I mowed the lawns — at home and at church; I cleaned the pool, I raked the leaves, I weeded, left the heaps in the driveway where she’d have to see my efforts. Tried to get her to talk to me. To acknowledge me. She didn’t budge.
Great-Uncle Klaas showed up at the front door. I was shocked to see him. He resembled Oupa Liebenberg in so many ways — once handsome face, the arched nose, the long slender fingers, the thinning hair — but he was filthy, smelly, with greasy hair and a moth-eaten coat that smelt of mildew and old sweat. The man sitting there in our garden looked nothing like on the photographs I had seen of him where he was young, startlingly good-looking, dressed in a black suit and holding three graduation scrolls and wearing a tasselled cap. Great-Uncle Klaas — even after he went mad — had been everywhere in the passage of late Ouma and Oupa Grootjie’s cold house in Orkney — beside stark paintings of the Battle of Blood River and a huge pencil drawing of Dingaan’s kraal. But the man on those photographs had been tall, strong, with high cheekbones, a well-trimmed moustache and black eyes that smiled pensively at the camera.
We fed him before he would again be on his way. Without the slightest hint of shame, he stuffed a sandwich and a banana into his pocket. He asked how Bernice and Lena were doing and Bokkie said Bernice was consistent and solid, and Lena was also working hard even though her primary interest lay in sport. I knew he was going to ask about me. But, even before he could, Bokkie, looking into the middle distance, said that I was meant to be the clever one in the family but that I had spiralled into mediocrity and for all she knew I would fail Standard Five and have to be sent to a school for the mentally retarded. ‘All the talent in the world and he’s going to end up a zero on a contract,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Maybe you can speak to him, Groot-Oom Klaas, warn him what becomes of the idle.’ She went on to tell Uncle Klaas about Miss Roos writing that I couldn’t contain my boisterousness. A word that seemed now to feature in our family’s every interaction. Bokkie whispered how I had disgraced her and Bok with my loud and rampant behaviour. Uncle Klaas laughed out loud. He said boisterous could mean a thousand different things. That it was a positive word as far as he was concerned and that the family should let me be. He said you kill a child’s spirit if you try and turn the child into something he is not. With that he got up, burped, patted his stomach and said he would soon be heading back to the Transvaal. Before he idled down the driveway, he asked to see Bok’s business. We showed him the garage with the shelves of curios. Because he reeked so badly of sweat, Bokkie and I stood at the garagedoor while he nosed around, not saying a word. Then he was off, down the street.
We saw him again in Toti the next day, walking down the main road with a bantu by his side. Bokkie slid down her seat and us three kids dived for cover so that he wouldn’t see us. We laughed and giggled. And Bokkie was no longer ignoring me. From the Toti library I took Twain’s Tom Sawyer and F.A. Venter’s Man van Cirene and Geknelde Land. I swam a lot and read constantly at the poolside over Bokkie’s warnings that I was destroying my eye-sight through reading in the glare. On a Saturday afternoon, when SABC TV was due to test broadcast a rugby match, I sat at the pool, legs dangling in the wate
r, reading the first letter I had ever received from overseas. Abroad.
20 June 1975
Hotel Auersperg
Auerspergstrasse
Vienna, Austria
Dear Karl
I wish you were here. This place is fantastic. The hotel we’re staying in used to he a palace. Gluck used to conduct concerts in the hall that’s now the dining room. I have been going to masterclasses at the university and it’s wondeful I’m learning more here in four hours than in a year in the Berg. I wish you were here. We’ve been to see where Mozart lived when he first came to Vienna for Count Colloredo who treated him like he was a slave. Mozart had to eat with the servants. Can you believe it? Mozart is everywhere. I was invited to give a small performance of the A Minor Rondo, K 511 and it went so well. You would love the Mozartplatz. It has small statues from the Magic Flute. Tamino is playing the flute and Pamina leaning against him. I’ve been to places where all the famous composers went: Brahms, Haydn, Strauss, Schibert, Bruckner and to Heiligenstadt to Beethoven’s one house and to the villa where he composed the Ninth and to Schwartzspanierhaus where he died on 26 March 1827.
It’s very hot and I wish there was snow because this doesn’t feel like Europe at all. From here we go to Paris and I’ll see where Chopin lived and wrote most of his work. Imagine if you could he here, how much fun we’d have. I miss you. How is Alette and your family? Phase send them my regards. I’m not writing letters to anyone else, though I’ve sent postcards to Lukas and the others and one to Beauty. I think of you when I play. I’ll write again from Paris.
