by Mark Behr
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus,
Deus, Sabaoth
Then the brass, almost inaudible the repetition of Sanctus, sanctus and he bounces, the staccato and crescendo quartet:
Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua
and the whole orchestra takes it up before Dominic comes in to the holy of holies with Osanna in excelsis, which the others repeat, dramatically, and Dominic’s final excelsis when at once it is over, carrying away into the afternoon quiet of school passages. The silence of a boarding schools deserted afternoon. I take them in together: joined in the music, the man and the boy. One’s head bowed, the other’s up, eyes closed. Intertwined. Auspicious. Dusts twirl and spiral like stars and planets in the rays of white sun.
Unaware of me up there. Looking down on them. How would I choose? It occurred to me that I may have to do that. If it was not already done. I would not think of it; if I do not think it, the choice does not exist. They spoke; the ensemble began to pack away instruments. The other soloists left. Dominic tarried. Voices and laughter. I leant over the balustrade, trying to hear what was being said or wanting to insinuate myself into the intimacy of their togetherness.
‘More tremolo . . . High G . . . Needs recitativo drammatico without losing your tone colour. But don’t push so hard. Your voice sounds tired . . .’
‘There’s something here that reminds me of Mozart . . . Requiem . . . My Grade Eight sonata . . .’
‘Haydn . . . Sonata form . . . Actually, Handel’s fugue patterns . . .’
Dominic looks up. I raise my hand and he his as he smiles. Jacques turns, lifts his gaze, and stops what he was saying. We stare, as if all three of us have caught each other out.
‘I thought you were going riding?’ Dom asks with his head thrown back.
‘Were back early, so I came to listen.’ I answer, standing up with my hands on the balustrade.
‘What do you think, Karl? Of the Sanctus?’
‘Brilliant, Sir,’ I say, hating myself for having nothing more original to offer, no way of entering their conversation as an equal.
‘Meet you outside,’ Dom says, and moves to the door. I turn to go, then look down again at Jacques. His eyes go to Dominic, then skim the hall before he nods at me, signals that I should come tonight.
14
He must have been nine or ten or thereabout. He was at the front door in the passage dressed in uniform with his box suitcase in hand, ready to walk to school. His sisters were already halfway down the asbestos driveway. He heard his mothers voice, angry, furious, growing louder in her and his fathers bedroom. He knew what he had done. His father came down the passage and he froze, terrified he was about to be beaten. But the man merely walked up to him and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Very gently. He spoke softly. He said many things — most of which the boy would later not remember — while he looked into the boy’s blue eyes with his own even bluer. The man may have smelt of smoke or Old Spice aftershave and toothpaste. Before turning and walking away, he said: ‘If you ever so much as think of doing it again, I will kill you.’
15
And we didn’t. Haven’t. Ever, spoken about it.
I found the three of them on their beds. Only Lukas looked up when I came in. Why was Almeida not there? Already in the shower? His towel was gone from the back of the locker; his riding cap was missing; his dressing gown no longer over Dominic’s on the hook. Almeida had evacuated E Dorm — I knew it without asking. For the previous three weeks, ever since Dominic’s departure, Steven had slept in Dominic’s bed. Now he was gone. I knew, again without needing input from any of them, that none of us would even mention his leaving. Almeida must have known: from the moments we were summoned from prep. I had; he must have. Suddenly I hated Steven. More applause from downstairs; long and drawn out. Who had told Steven to move back to C Dorm? Uncle Charlie, obviously. So, he knows too.
Their eyes — and I suppose mine — were still red and swollen. Mervy s face and neck were the clour of a beetroot, his red hair a scrubbing brush set in all directions. Only a blind, mad, idiot could not see our state. Who, for a second, would believe that they had done this to us for not changing sheets? Anybody and nobody. As much as I knew the four of us would not ever speak about it, I knew they had to suspect — as much as Almeida knew — that it had been me. I had betrayed them. And how, I wondered briefly, how had Mathison known to not call Almeida? How, how in the wide world of one hundred and twenty boys, did they know it was only the four of us, and not Almeida? Almeida had been there — that night — yet he hadn’t been called. What had Mathison said to each of them, as he called them in, ahead of me? Too many questions. Impossible to ask.
D Dorm was preparing for showers. Around me no one moved. I frowned at Lukas.
‘Uncle Charlie said were to wait. We’ll go after them.’
We always go with D. Uncle Charlie knows.
D bundled down their staircase to the showers. Uncle Charlie’s voice called up saying we were to get undressed, put on our gowns and wait till we were summoned. Of course he knows.
We began undressing. Bennie was the first out of his jeans.
‘Fuck, it was sore. Bastard, bastard, cunt, fucker, poes, hoer, moer, hond, teef, kont,’ he whispered. His bum, turned towards me, was covered in a series of angry ridges.
I peeled off my trousers. As I rolled down my long johns I smelt the pee before I saw the yellow stains all the way down the white hose.
Mervyn whimpered. He was bent forward, looking into the long johns now collapsed around his ankles. Pink smudges. He strained his neck to look over his shoulder at his buttocks, and as he turned I could see first just the pink of his bum and then the purple and red where the skin had been torn and open flesh stuck through the purple welts that sat there — an inch above the skin — like crusts of rugged red candle wax. I checked my long johns. Nothing. Just the pissstains. I turned my neck, to see my bum. With my fingertips I felt them, corrugations, huge, but mercifully no blood. How was Mervy ever going to sit? Lukas s bum: purple and swollen over the grey of a week before when he and Bennie had got it from Uncle Charlie for untidy lockers.
E Dorm was no longer called to shower with the other Standard Fives. Maybe ten days. I didn’t count. The four of us showered alone under Uncle Charlie’s supervision. Then he said that starting the following evening we were to go back to the old routine. Showers with D. It was only then I realised we had not permanently been banished. Uncle Charlie offered no explanation. I suspected it had to do with Mervyn’s bum. They had only wanted to prevent us from having to explain the chaos of Mervyn’s bum, and, to a lesser extent, the damage to our own.
The longer you sat, the easier it became; but it was winter, and the cold seemed to make it worse. Morning PT, which had always been one of the highlights of my day — the mist, the cold, the clouds of breath as we ran through the dewy grass of forest and veld — was horrible that first week: my buttocks were wounds wanting to tear loose and separate from my body. Riding was out of the question. Lukas said I should come with him for he refused to let a beating keep him from the stables. But I couldn’t face the pounding of the saddle. I wondered what Beauty thought if by chance she had seen the piss stains in my long johns on washday; or, more than my piss, Mervy s blood, also on his sheets and pyjamas. My and Lukas s bums — perhaps hardy from regular canings and the saddles — began to turn into psychedelic blue, green and yellow tattoos a while before Bennie’s and at least a week before Mervyn’s. As Bennie was caned as often as Lukas and I, I was fascinated that he, our hardy little Rottweiler, took so long to heal. The saddle, while it probably didn’t lessen the pain of the caning for Lukas and me, did seem to have a neutralising effect on the visible damage left afterwards.
*
Had Lukas or I — I wondered a few times before letting that and the betrayal go for ever — indeed been the instigators, that night? Had Lukas and I been the ones to suggest we do It? And if we were the ringleaders, who had come up with
the idea first? That was not, by any measure, the way I remembered it, then or now. It just seemed to happen; without suggestion.
After lights-out, Bennie and I had snuck into D Dorm to terrorise Niklaas Bruin. Once Niklaas was crying and after we got back to E, we had pushed each other around playfully and said it was too early to go to sleep. Lukas suggested we get out onto the roof and watch the moon. All five of us, including Almeida, put on our dressing gowns-, got out of the window and walked down the side of the slanted corrugated iron roof. A hundred times before, when the fruit was ripe in the orchards, we had thought of climbing down. But it was a twenty-foot drop from the roof to the ground and the gutter was too rusty to fasten sheets. So we had just let it go.
It was cold and we knew we wouldn’t stay out long. High above V Forest a veld fire cut a brilliant red X into the mountainside. Lukas said he wished we had cigarettes. We argued about which was north and which south. We looked for north in the stars and said that was where Dominic was now, somewhere in Europe. Lukas and I showed the others how to read the Southern Cross to find true south. We whispered, aware that the school was just falling asleep, careful not to let our movements be heard on the roof. We spoke of exploring the cosmos. Maybe one day someone from Earth would live on the moon or Mars or Jupiter. There couldn’t be life in any form on other planets because the Bible said so. I wondered what Dom would have said to that if he were there. Bennie wanted to become an astronaut. For a while we sat arguing about which Apollo had landed on the moon. Bennie was the only one who was certain it had been Apollo II, citing the collection of silver coins commemorating America’s space programme that he had garnered from Mobil petrol stations. It was quiet; just the river, no dogs barking,the fire too distant to carry its crackles to us. We too had gone silent. We went back up the roof. As we entered the dorm through the window, we started pushing each other around quietly, falling on top of each other. Wordless. We pulled down our pyjama pants and took turns to stick our penises into the cleavage of each others’ buttocks. Not penetrating, just rubbing. I became aware that Almeida had withdrawn, had gone back to Dominic’s bed. While I rubbed against Lukas who lay face down below me, I watched Almeida in the glow of the moon. He lay silently, his back to us. In a whisper I asked why he wasn’t joining in, and he whispered back that it was against the Catholic Church. Lukas snorted into the pillow and we carried on, then changed partners and positions. It could have carried on for no longer than maybe ten minutes, nothing more. Just playing. When we were all back in our beds, Lukas announced that I was the best, because I had an okkerneut-piel. But Mervyn is also circumcised I said. Lukas said Mervy’s was too big and too red. Like an ostrich cock. We laughed and Mervy told Lukas to get lost with his willy the size of a pinky and how did he know it was red in the dark unless Lukas had been eyeing it in the showers? Our laughter echoed down the stairs and Almeida said we should quiet down before Uncle Charlie heard the noise. Then we joked with Almeida for being too chicken to do it or have it done to him. He didn’t respond. I felt something like disappointment — though that concept denotes something too strong — at his resistance to joining us; partly because it broke the unity of our group, partly, and only very, very far in the recesses of my mind, because I wanted to touch Almeida, his dark skin, his curly black head, the ears like brown shells, the small penis in the dense tuft of hair; the chest like marble. I said nothing of this. Instead, said I thought Mervy’s was the best because it was as big as a stallion’s. We giggled and guffawed some more and then slowly went quiet. As they drifted to sleep around me, I heard the squeaking of Lukas’s bedsprings. Knew what he was doing: wanking, tossing off. Was he able to come yet? As he said that day ontheir farm? Masturbation as the dictionary had beneath mastodon: The stimulation or manipulation of one’s own genitals, esp. to orgasm; the stimulation, by manual or other means exclusive of coitus, of another’s genitals. And then, to coitus: sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, a coming together, uniting, and below that, coitus interruptus: coitus that is intentionally interrupted by withdrawal before ejaculation of semen into the vagina. From Lukas’s bed came the increase in speed, the loud breathing, the rattling of the bed. Then the quiet.
16
A grey heavy sky.
Bok’s Land Rover in the driveway. He was home early. I had taken Simba along to Camelot in the paddock. Lena and Bernice were down on the beach with the Pierces. Leaving Simba outside I went in through the kitchen. House dark and hulled in quiet. I heard something in their bedroom. I walked down the passage. Their door was open.
Bokkie sat on the edge of their bed with Bok’s arms around her. Both crying. Bok noticed me and motioned me closer.
‘Dademan died this afternoon.’ A simple statement through my father’s tears. I had never seen him cry like this.
Then, I see myself, throwing my head back, screaming; Bok and Bokkie, holding onto me as I wail, no, no, and were all weeping, all three of us, them clasping me to them. I break from their arms and jump up and down. How, what happened? Bokkie says Dad has gone to a better place, that we must use that knowledge to console ourselves. At once, as quickly as I had started crying, I stop.
Dademan had gone to Addington Hospital for blood-pressure tests; nothing major, we had been told. Then, so Bok said, while he was still in hospital a blood clot had passed through his heart. Mumdeman had been with him, staying with Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain while he was in hospital. The funeral in Durban would take place in three days’ time. We’d be going.
I went outside to wait for Lena and Bernice. Bok said I shouldn’t tell them; he would. Simba came running, waving his tail and I sat on the kitchen step and told the dog that Dademan was dead. Dead, I said, Dademan will go to heaven. Maybe it’s adjacent to doggy heaven and Dademan would see Chaka and Suz. As I spoke, I began crying again, now as much about Dademan as about Chaka and Suz; about Jim and Nkosasaan and Boy whom I would never see again. Death was like saying goodbye: terrible, terrible, terrible. Death was something I had grown up with, seeing it every day in the jaws of lion, the arrow of a cheetah’s speed felling a warthog or impala, vultures clustered on a rhino killed by poachers, the swoop of a fish eagle to clutch its food from the water, hyena laughing like cannibals over their rotten fest. Death, I knew, was part of the cycle of life. I thought I knew it, understood it, when Chaka and Suz had been put down in Umfolozi, as merely the way it was meant to be; no place for sentiment in the bush, Bok said, and I understood, agreed. But this was not the bush; this was not animals feeding to nourish themselves or dogs put to sleep for killing an antelope. This was Dad — Dademan. The man who told me stories of hunting and of the war. Who shot cines of us kids whenever he could. Who let me play with the radio at Charters Creek. Who was meant to come across the estuary on Piper and let me and Lena steer it back to their little jetty at high tide. And what about poor Mumdeman? Poor, poor Mumdeman. Born in an ox-wagon in Mozambique, working so hard, side by side with Dad to clear the land in Tanganyika, I suddenly wept tears for everything that had died around me during the years in Mkuzi and Umfolozi. I wanted to go back to Umfolozi, or better -still, back to Mkuzi, where there was less death and less goodbye. Then I remembered the little warthogs, Lossie, bitten by a mamba, the horse Vonk shot after he broke his leg, and I didn’t want to go back there either. Back to Tanzania, that’s where I wanted to go; back to where I had been ababy and Dademan said I still had wings: there, where I was an angel in a land that was paradise. Before memory.
We got off school for two days and drove to Durban. Bok and Bokkie spoke about Dademan being buried in the Presbyterian church even though we were Dutch Reformed. Bokkie said it was a fine idea as a compromise between Aunt Siobhain’s Catholicism and our Protestantism. Bokkie said that Aunt Siobhain had written recently anyway to say she was considering leaving the Catholic Church because of its formality and stiff outdatedness. Uncle Michael never went to church, in any case. Aunt Siobhain said maybe by changing to Presbyterian she could get him out of
the clubhouse and into church. Now would be a good time, Bokkie said, now that our hard-headed hard-drinking uncle was so vulnerable after Dademan’s death. We said nothing about the fact that neither of our parents ever set foot in the Matubatuba church. One of them would drive us there and sit reading the paper, waiting while we were in Sunday school.
A church is a church, Bok said. But Dademan would none the less be relieved to know he wasn’t being buried from a cathedral with golden idols and crosses and the adornments of the rich. I asked whether it was true that Catholics stuck big safety pins through their tongues and chanted mantras to Satan while they burnt incense and walked down the aisle. Bokkie turned from the front seat and asked where I had come across such rubbish. I said I’d heard it from Sam Pierce. Bokkie said there you have it, allow the kids to mix with Makoppolanders and you get this sort of idiocy implanted in their brains. And what’s more, she said, this business of boys going into girls’ rooms had to stop. We were getting too old for that kind of mixing. Lena should probably also move in with Bernice. When we get back to St Lucia, Bokkie said, that’s the end of hanging around the Pierces’ trailer.
