by Mark Behr
And next year it’s the Senior Choir — the crowning glory!’
‘I’m not sure that I’m going back,’ I said.
Her jaw dropped: ‘Why? You’d be silly to leave now! Just when your voice must be at its peak.’
I said I’d think about it. She again insisted that it was, without a shadow of a doubt, worth my while staying in the Berg and that leaving before my voice broke would be a waste of years in training. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘you don’t know what will be left of your voice once it’s broken. I’ve heard boys’ voices — some close to as good as your little Dominic friend — changed to nothing but croaking after they became men. Use it while you’ve got it.’
‘I’ll give it serious thought, Juffrou,’ I said.
‘What about a solo in church on Christmas Day?’ she gleamed.
‘No, please not. My voice is tired after this year. There was the Eastern Cape Tour in April, then October to Paarl and now the Malawi one.’
‘We saw you on TV at the Taal Monument. Uh, who was that black-haired boy who did “Oktobermaand”?’
‘Steven Almeida. He’s Portuguese.’
‘Exquisite. I’ve never heard a voice like that.’ And she shuddered, showing her delight.
‘He’s a friend of mine.’ I told them to watch Kraaines on Christmas Day, when our pre-Malawi recordings would be broadcast.
I asked Lena how she liked Port Natal and she said she was very happy to be there. The kids of Port Natal had pride in the school and themselves, unlike the white trash of Kuswag. To illustrate the point she told me about Leon Lategan, brother of Anka, from whom she got her school uniforms: ‘Leon saw a kaffir wearing a Port Natal blazer that had obviously been discarded. So Leon bought the blazer for five rand from the kaffir and went home and burnt it. Now can you imagine a Kuswag kid taking such pride in their school uniform?’
I said I doubted any of the Kuswag kids would have five rand to buy the blazer in the first place. It wasn’t a matter of money, she countered, it was one of character and loyalty to one’s school. Pride would not let five rand stand in its way.
We spoke about the pending visit of our aunt and uncle from Klerksdorp, and wondered whether the annual Christmas drama was again set to play: Uncle Joe disappearing, going where we suspected, looking for prostitutes at the Smuggler’s Inn at the docks on Point Road. The previous four Christmases had unfolded in the same way: Uncle Joe out every night and Aunt Lena in tears and the depths of despair, alone with the Brats in the Malibu or Elangeni hotel room.
‘Does Bok still go to Smuggler’s?’ I asked.
‘For business, he says, to see curio dealers! But Bokkie doesn’t believe him. Neither do we.’
I was suddenly grateful that I was seldom home to feel ashamed of my father’s going where we knew and he told us there were whores, strippers and rock musicians. Nor to witness the accusations, the silences, or to hear my mother wordlessly slamming down pots and pans on kitchen surfaces.
‘Why he has to see dealers in Smuggler’s I don’t know,’ Lena said, a tone of bitterness in her voice.
‘Does Alette know he goes there?’
Are you mad! He’s a deacon in the church. Everyone will think were common, or something.’
I said I needed to go to the Toti library to take out some books and Lena said she hoped I wasn’t planning on spending the whole, holiday reading.
Christmas morning — the sun again without mercy — was church. Before we entered, Bokkie took me to see the mustard tree she had planted when we’d first got toToti. The tree had barely grown half an inch.
Juffrou Sang, behind the organ, nodded to us as our family with Alette amongst us marched down the aisle, my sisters in hats, me in my black school blazer and flannels. Bok and Prof came in with the deacons, dressed in their black suits. Kids who had been in Kuswag with me till the end of Standard Three dotted the pews. The sight of them filled me with a sense of superiority: they looked the way they had two years before — the same long pants or Terylene suits on the boys, the same floral dresses and floppy hats and shapeless loose hair on the girls. What a relief to know I wouldn’t be returning to Kuswag. That I’d be going to Port Natal Hoer. Juffrou Sang’s recorder ensemble — to which I’d once proudly belonged — played a poorly arranged medley of carols that now sounded utterly amateurish. Alette and I nudged each other, shared snide glances and I suppressed a snort by forcing a sputtering cough. Soon Bokkie and my sisters understood the source of our amusement and within seconds all five of us had the silent but uncontrollable giggles. Beside me, Bokkie was the worst, both hands clasped around her Bible were shaking, the fabric of her dress vibrating around her knees. Eventually our entire bench rocked. Bokkie dug her nails into my and Bernice’s forearms and whispered for us to stop. Throughout the service we remained calm, but at the end, when Dominee Lourens walked down from the pulpit and the ensemble struck up a frightfully cacophonous version of Psalm 23, the giggles again overcame us. Outside the church we could barely speak to the bystanders and we rushed to the car where we wailed and cackled while waiting for Bok to come from the vestry. The sounds of the organ from inside died away and Alette said she had to be off. Taking her leave she rolled her eyes at having to go and face her mother with platitudes and embellishments about the ensemble’s splendid renditions.
For years I had wanted an air rifle and for Christmas I got it at last. In the bush between our house and Kingsway High, Lena and I, followed everywhere by the dog Judy, went shooting: mousebirds, Indian mynahs, sparrows, all the birds that may eat paw-paw, guava and avocado pears from our yard. We were both good shots. When Bok and Bokkie went shooting at the Poinsettia Pistol Club, my sisters were sometimes allowed to fire a few rounds after official competitions were over. In our back yard we now put up a target and held air-rifle contests. I took my time, aimed carefully. Lena said anyone could shoot well if they took for ever like me. But what good would that do if there was a burglar in the house, or if I had to fire rapidly at an enemy? The trick was to aim and fire. No, she said, I’d be useless if a kaffir came into the house. The boys at Port Natal, Lena said, did target practice with .22s during cadette period. She said it was ridiculous that girls didn’t do cadets and were not conscripted for the army. She wished we were more like Israel where girls had to do national service along with the boys. She said she’d heard of a military academy for girls at George near Port Elizabeth. Maybe she’d go there after she’d finished school.
At Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain’s for Christmas lunch I saw Stephanie for the first time in ages. She tore open her carton of Malawi cigarettes at once. She lit a cigarette and took a long draw, exclaiming she could taste East African soil in the tobacco. She and Bernice spent their time in Stephanie’s old upstairs room. With only Lena, James and me, the catching game had lost its lustre. We got Bok and Uncle Michael to join us for lawn cricket, and Bok again spent time perfecting our overhand bowling.
Stephanie had, since the Bush days, become a complete stranger to me. She had finished school, lived in her own apartment in Durban’s Overport City, and worked as a buyer for Woolworths. Now over twenty, the years between us had become insurmountable. She was a woman, independent, smoking, driving her own yellow Mini that she called Herbie, after the Herbie Rides Again movie.
Later in the day Bokkie called upstairs, telling Bernice to come down. Bernice should remember only one Christmas remained before she left our family for good. These last holidays together were moments she would treasure for the rest of her life. As six p.m. drew close we gathered in the lounge to watch the Kraaines Christmas Special. Standing up close to the screen I pointed out my friends, Lukas and Bennie. There I was on TV, caught in close up once briefly during Away in a Manger’, the carol drowned as we clapped and whistled. I looked ghastly to myself — washed out, pale and nondescript. Dominic — skinny as a rake, his mouth as wide as a soup bowl on the ‘Silent Night’ descant. Almeida — frequently zoomed onto by the camera, drew admiring comm
ents from Aunt Siobhain and Stephanie, while Bokkie and Bernice confirmed that he was an exceptionally good-looking boy.
‘What a dish!’ Stephanie gasped.
‘Like a young Montgomery Clift,’ Aunt Siobhain said, providing me the first recollection I have of hearing the actor’s name.
‘He’s my best friend,’ I said and believed myself.
Aunt Siobhain suggested we get tickets to see the musical Ipi Tombi in the Alhambra. Newspaper reviews hailed it ‘a marvellous spectacle of tribal song and dance’. Bokkie said she doubted that we could afford to go, and besides, Uncle Joe and Aunt Lena would be down and they wouldn’t be able to take little Joelene and Lenard. At six and four they were the most spoilt brats in the world, those two, got everything they laid their eyes on because Uncle Joe was a millionaire and Aunt Lena wasn’t allowed to beat them. Whenever the subject was Aunt Lena’s children, each of us had a mouthful to say. Bokkie, in particular, was a bottle of rage. Uncle Joe had, from the outset forbidden Aunt Lena to lift a hand against the children, an instruction and rule that left us agog — not merely because we had accepted our countless beatings, but because the Brats were, indeed, the manipulative centre of the world wherever they went and we followed. Joelene and Lenard would simply demand — question marks never punctuated their speech — and Aunt Lena would have to jump. In the presence of their father the Brats threw tantrums and plates, and Aunt Lena was not allowed any response other than requesting, imploring, begging or bribing them to stop. Away from Uncle Joe, the kids could sometimes be darlings, and little Joelene particularly, bright and charming, could succeed in letting one forget temporarily what she was capable of when her father was around.
‘That,’ Bokkie said, ‘that the Brats run the Klerksdorp mansion, is what gets my poor sister into the madhouse for shock treatments. And of course Joe Mackenzie’s whoring. Now, the latest, is that he has the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of his farm foremen . . .’ A brief silence followed, not from shock — nothing Uncle Joe did could shock us any more — merely to allow the company to process the man’s latest indulgence.
‘Well. Why doesn’t Lena leave him?’ Uncle Michael asked. The same question we’d all asked a hundred times.
‘How can she? He’ll just have her declared crazy and she’ll lose the children,’ Bokkie answered, putting down her knitting. ‘He’s told her so: try and leave me and you’ll sit in the madhouse with your finger up your arse. He owns Klerksdorp, that bastard. Owns the police, all the lawyers. Lena can’t turn her arse and he knows what she’s doing. Night after night she sits in the mansion while he’s with the fourteen-year-old slut on the farm.’
‘What do the fourteen-year-old’s parents have to say?’ asked Aunt Siobhain.
‘What can they say? The father works for Joe? He’s Joe’s foreman. The one who pays the piper plays the tune.’
‘But she’s a minor, for God’s sake. What about the police?’
‘Joe Mackenzie owns the Klerksdorp police and every magistrate, hear you me.’
‘A building contractor for the mines, my arse! I’m telling you today: that’s not where he gets his money.’
‘Do you still think he’s into illegal diamonds?’
‘I don’t think it, I know it, so does Lena who does all his books. Why do you think he never appoints a qualified accountant for his businesses, lets poor Lena sit there day in and day out? He tells her how to cook those books, I’m telling you.’
‘Well, why doesn’t Lena go to the police? Tell them about the diamonds, that will stand in any court of law.’
‘My cousin Salomo Burger, big shot in the Transvaal Security Police, told me: Joe Mckenzie owns the police and every Klerksdorp magistrate. Now that’s coming from the inside, right from the corridors of power . . .’
We were all silent: adults and children alike. In the face of Uncle Joe’s money, his power — and our unspoken envy.
Late that evening the phone rang and Bernice answered. When I heard her say Dominic’s name I ran to take the receiver. Speaking softly into the mouthpiece, I told him about the air rifle and our day on the beach. He said they’d been skiing on Hartebeespoortdam and were flying to Plettenberg Bay for New Year at the Beacon Isle Hotel. He said Dr Webster wasn’t all that keen on the Beacon Isle since that was the place Mimi Coertze had blown a gasket and filed an official complaint when a black waiter who spoke English couldn’t serve her in Afrikaans. Anyway, Mrs Webster wanted to go there and Dom’s father had at long last capitulated, saying he wouldn’t let the memory of a second-rate prima donnas first-rate discrimination ruin the place for them. He said he wished I could come along and I said I did too. Excitedly Dominic told me that while we were in Malawi Mrs Webster had had a chat to Mr Cilliers. We’d be doing some Beethoven
Mass for the Senior Choir’s New Year’s programme. I’d never heard of the Mass. ‘I love you,’ he said and I asked where his parents were. ‘They’re sitting right here. Dad says hi and Merry Christmas even though he believes Christmas is nothing more than a glittering ball of capitalist crap.’ Behind Dom I could hear the Websters laugh.
‘Well, thanks for phoning, Dom.’
‘If I don’t call again I’ll see you end of January, okay?’
‘Yes, and say hello to your folks and enjoy Beacon Isle.’
I could not believe he had told me he loved me with his parents sitting right there. I was outraged. Petrified that the Websters would guess what we’d done in Malawi.
On Boxing Day Alette left with Prof and Juffrou Sang for their vacation. Saddened at her going, it was good to know we’d be seeing each other again after New Year.
Bernice, Lena and I strolled along the deserted Kingsway road towards the Poinsettia pistol range where Bok and Bokkie were competing in the end-of-year competition. Bernice paged through one of Stephanie’s old Fair Lady magazines.
‘I am not going back to the Berg, next year,’ I casually announced, having decided it would serve me best to get my sisters on side before broaching the subject with my parents.
‘Why? And what do Bok and Bokkie say?’ Bernice asked without looking up from the magazine.
‘I haven’t told them . . . But I want to start high school here. And it’s too expensive to stay in the Berg, anyway.’ I said I was not blind, that I could see they and Bokkie were in the same clothes they’d been wearing a year before. And one had to be a retard not to notice that Bok’s business was failing.
‘A bit late, Karl! For you to realise that after two years and thousands of rands down the toilet,’ Lena snapped.
‘I didn’t realise it only just now, Lena. In July — when they took me back — I asked them not to leave me there.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ said Bernice.
‘Well, I did, you can ask them. And Aunt Siobhain was there too.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone there in the first place,’ Lena responded, anger more pronounced in her voice.
‘Oh come on, Lena, it’s an honour and he’s developing his talents,’ Bernice said and gave me a smile as she turned a page. While she had always taken pride in my being in the Berg, Lena had seemed, within months of my passing the audition, to resent my going there.
‘An honour for him and poverty for us,’ Lena said.
‘Lena, we have everything we need. There’s food on the table and you’re at Port Natal as well. I’m at Kuswag and not complaining.’ Lena said Bernice had chosen to stay at Kuswag. Bernice responded that she had stayed only because she wanted to finish high school in one place rather than start afresh elsewhere.
‘And that’s exactly why I want to come back,’ I said, ‘so I won’t change high schools midway.’
‘Do you think you’re coming to Port Natal?’
‘Yes, I might as well start—’
‘Think twice, Little Nightingale,’ Lena spat. I had no idea what had gotten into her. Suddenly she was hissing: ‘The boys are waiting for you . . . The whole school knows about you. Where they needed more
information I’ve filled in the gaps. If I were you I’d stay away for as long—’
‘Lena!’ Bernice cut her short and came to a stop in the middle of the road. The magazine hung open from her hand which rested on one hip: ‘Why are you always so hateful to him? What has he done to you? A minute ago you were saying he should come home and now you’re threatening him.’
‘I never said he should come home. Groot meneer on TV He could rot in those mountains for all I care.’
‘Stop it, Lena,’ Bernice said. ‘You sound like a witch.’ And then she again took to reading Fair Lady and we walked on.
‘And,’ Lena began, ‘if you think Alette is going to be your girlfriend I’ve got more news for you.’
‘She is my girlfriend.’
‘Maybe now while you’re away, imbecile. But a Standard Six boy coming from a pansy school with a Standard Eight girlfriend. Ha! She’ll be the laughing stock of the school and they’ll kill you.’
‘I don’t care, they can do anything they want to me. I can look after myself. I’ve been away from home amongst prefects and Seniors for two years. Do you think I’m scared of you and your friends?’
‘You’ll eat those words, believe me.’
‘Listen, Lena,’ Bernice said as the first shots could be heard, the double thump of the echoes bouncing off the hill above the range, ‘I have had it with you. If you don’t stop terrorising him I’ll tell Bok.’
‘Bok will say it can only do him the world of good.’
‘Well, then I’ll tell Bokkie.’
‘Ja, that’s just typical of you! Run to his protector. Why do you think he’s such a little sissy in the first place? It’s because you and Bokkie have treated him like he’s some special case since he was in nappies in Oljorro. You and her, and the whole family, think the sun shines out of his arse, while we have to sit without new clothes, while we can never go to movies or eat out, while we can never go on holiday because he’s flying around Malawi with a flock of fucken fairies. Tell Bokkie, I’ve got Bok on my side.’
