by Mark Behr
‘You are a bitch,’ Bernice said.
‘You are the bitch and the coward. You speak behind his back as well, about how he’s the family pet. You and James and that slut Stephanie — all of you. Why don’t you say to his face what you say when he’s not around? I’m just saying what the whole family says anyway. No one can stand him! Don’t you remember how it was when we were growing up, and we had to work in the yard, while little Mr Ladida sat in the shade reading?’
‘That’s shit, Lena,’ I said, ‘I mowed the lawn and raked and pickedup leaves as much as you did, and I still do holidays when I’m home. Even now.’
‘Karl, ignore her. Bok let you go to the Berg because it’s an elite school. For the upper class. For smart people. Just ignore her, she’s so obviously jealous of your talents.’
‘I wouldn’t speak of lack of talent if I were you,’ Lena now turned on Bernice. ‘It’s not as if you’re Einstein, Miss Kuswag Standard Nine C.’
‘I’m in matric now and I’m a prefect. And better in C at Kuswag than E at Port Natal.’
‘Z at Port Natal is better than A at Kuswag. And there’s no honour in being a prefect amongst the poor whites anyway. If you were in Port Natal you’d never smell the badge.’
‘Ignore the little bitch,’ Bernice repeated as we turned a corner and the shooting range came into view.
Now Lena refocused on me: ‘You never lifted a finger, in the bush or before you went away. I would go to Bokkie and say, he’s not helping and she’d say leave him alone he’s reading. Have you fed the dog once, cleaned that pool once, raked once in the week you’ve been home?’
‘I scooped leaves off the pool this morning.’
‘There’s a filter to clean, there’s acid and chlorine to be thrown in, there’s a bottom that needs brushing, pipes need to be rolled up and put away. It’s me and Bernice that work like kaffirs while you’re running around with Alette.’
‘I have not been running around with her! And she’s your friend, too.’
‘Wouldn’t say so when you’re around.’
‘Ignore her, Karl!’
‘And yesterday, I again had to mow the lawn while Bokkie took you to town.’
‘She took me to the library because I wanted to take out A Streetcar Named Desire.’
‘I don’t care whether she took you to take out A Queer Named Karll Why must I work while you’re out on the town, gallivanting?’
‘The library isn’t out on the town.’
‘Just shut up, both of you.’
‘Go back to the mountains, Karl,’ Lena hissed, ‘where you can do your equestrian sports with the fokken hoi polloi.’
‘You mean hoity-toity, and they’re not all like that. Some guys like Ben—’
‘Oh, cut it out. Go and feel sorry for Bennie and Mervy and Lukassie and darling Dominickie with someone who cares. I hate you and I’m sick of hearing your shit stories.’
My face was flushed. We had entered the shooting-range gates and the discussion was clearly over. Around us people were greeting. Everyone in English. This and the business world formed the English sphere my parents occupied, the Dutch Reformed Church and the girls’ schools the Afrikaans.
Bokkie won a silver tray for best rapid-fire shot of the year and Bok for best all-round male. Afterwards there were speeches and tea and cake. A paper plate stacked with cake in hand, I went and sat in the now-abandoned shooting stalls. I despised Lena more in that instant than in the all the years of our conflict combined. It seemed clear that she hated me — perhaps even more than I had ever suspected. And, she was only saying what the whole family said, anyway. None of them, not one of them could stand me. After six months of virtual unbroken certainty about not going back to the Berg — the moments with Ma’am and Dominic at the lake had been fleeting, now nothing even worth remembering, no, something I had to forget, a flock of fucking fairies! — I now vacillated between wanting to return to the Berg at once and wanting nothing more than to stay in Amanzimtoti. Yes, I decided: I had to get back to Toti and go to Port Natal. A Queer Named Karl, what did she know — what — fucking ignoramus! All she could do was throw around a ball along with a team of equally idiotic baboons. Just like the rest of this family, no one withone iota of originality. As for that useless James. Oh, how horribly boring this whole family was; how depressing to have to be amongst them all again, like a mouse running in a wheel. Ughhh. But I might as well come back. Get it over with now. I’ll survive it, somehow. For all Lena’s anger, there was — I knew and couldn’t deny it — something true to what she’d said. My education was costing more than we could afford even to dream of. I was the one who got to travel while they never went on a single holiday except maybe up to Midmar Dam from where Mumdeman was about to retire anyway. I did not, absolutely not, agree that I was the family pet when it came to working in the garden or around the house. When I was home I was part of the dish-washing cycle, I carried out the trash, I raked and cut the lawn. The only thing with which I didn’t help was making food, but that was because it was women’s work and Bok didn’t like me hanging around the kitchen, like James. Always pottering and thinking himself a chef.
Time was running out. I had to make up my mind and take up the issue with Bok and Bokkie. I had to find a way to stay inToti. And a way to get Lena to love me. And the family, everyone. To be proud of me. It struck me again: my sister had grown to hate me. For years — even as we fought like cat and dog — she had been the one to defend and protect me. Could she really hate me? It was possible, I consoled myself, that she wanted less to hurt me by saying that, than she needed to remind me of how strong she really was.
From the Malibu, Aunt Lena took Lena and the Brats to do shopping and I — as in previous years — drove around with Uncle Joe to visit pigeon farmers in Westville, Cowies Hill and Durban North. Bernice was off somewhere with Robert, visiting Stephanie and her latest boyfriend. I had told Bokkie I didn’t want to spend my holiday driving around with Uncle Joe because I could not stand him. My mother said I should cease my selfishness and do it for Aunt Lena: ‘Be nice to Uncle Joe or else he’ll be nasty to Aunt Lena. Let’s see if we can get through one Christmas without him driving her insane. Please, Karl.’ At the Mackenzie mansion in Klerksdorp, the double-storey pigeon run was reportedly home to fifty thousand rand’s worth of pigeons, some imported from Belgium, France and Holland. Pigeons — and now Matilda — were his life. So, again I was Uncle Joe’s navigator. In the early years I had taken a book along to read in the car or in the hours I waited outside Durban’s smartest homes while he was in the cages. My reading had irritated him and so the books stayed at home. While he drove the silver Mercedes-Benz I tried to make small talk and to seem interested in what he was doing. Year after year I’d memorise characteristics of specific pigeons that had won major events for him. I would ask after the welfare of his champions and of his most prized breeding pair, which I knew had been brought in for three thousand rand from Brugge. With time, the most important pigeon farmers from the greater Durban area got to know me almost as well as my wealthy uncle from Klerksdorp.
While we drove along, he steered his talk towards sex. On one of our trips he said: ‘The size of a woman’s mouth is the same size as her cunt, did you know that, Karl?’ I forced a laugh and said no, I hadn’t known. ‘It’s a fact,’ he said. ‘Look at her mouth and you’re seeing her cunt.’ I was astonished, not about female genitalia’s replication on the female face, but that he could speak to me like that. I said I doubted it was true, that it was probably similarly fallacious to men with big hands, ears or feet having big cocks. Cock. Trying to say the word nonchalantly. I did not say Mervy has tiny ears, a left hand that struggled to change chords on the violin because his fingers were so short, that he wore a size three shoe! Uncle Joe asked whether I had ever fucked. I said no, though I had ‘touched Alette and some other girls’. I couldn’t say the word cunt — not to him. In the company of my friends it seemed I could use any word, not only because t
hey were my peers, but because dirty words never really sounded dirty when used amongst ourselves. In Uncle Joe’s mouth, sex and body parts sounded not only dirty, but vile and evil. Therewas, I thought but couldn’t figure what, a difference between why I found it odd to say cock in front of Bok and why I found it difficult to say in front of Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe said he remembered Alette from the previous year and that she was a pretty little thing, just like Lena and Bernice. I thought of him and the fourteen-year-old Matilda. I would have loved to ask him about her: I was fascinated, and repulsed all at once. Then he said I should not marry as divorce was expensive. Even listening to him, I felt, constituted a betrayal of Aunt Lena. I wished he’d stop. My aunt was sure to ask me what we had spoken about and I would be certain to lie about things that could upset her and tell the truth about others that seemed important to her peace of mind.
In front of the Malibu on South Beach, surrounded by thousands of Look Theres we spent hours on beach chairs and under umbrellas. We bought drinks and ice creams almost every time an Indian vendor walked by calling, ‘Eyescream-cole-drinks-eyescream-cole-drinks-eyescrreeeeem.’ Day in and out Uncle Joe’s eyes were on Lena. I observed him closely. The gaze of an old, sly ravenous lion. Inside me a terrible rage was building. When Lena wore her red bikini — a gift from him the previous Christmas — his eyes came alive, swarmed a hive of bees over my sister’s breasts, fixed on her pubis, then again ran up and down her legs. My anger was not only against him, but against Aunt Lena who brought this man into our house and into our lives. I adored my aunt and on account of Uncle Joe felt tremendous pity for her. Yet there were moments I loathed her for not leaving him and I blamed her for our having to deal with him and his bestial power. When he asked me to swim with the Brats, knowing I’d prefer to sit and read, Aunt Lena would look at me with pleading eyes, eyes that said do as he asks, for me. Then I’d take the children to play in the shallows, thinking of how I would like to kill their father and drown the two of them. Other times Uncle Joe would give me a wad of ten-rand notes — hundreds of rands at a time — and I, or Lena and I, or the two of us with Aunt Lena, were charged with taking the Brats to the funfair. When alone, I occasionally pocketed ten rand.
Away from their father, Joelene and Lenard could be utterly delightful. Joelene could transform herself from a sulking nuisance into a witty clown. With the beach crowded by hundreds of thousands of Transvaalers sunning themselves and swimming, there were frequent emergency announcements over the beach speakers of children lost. At six Joelene — with Uncle Joe off somewhere on his own — suggested I take her and drop her off as a lost child. To make the announcements a little more exciting we dropped her easy Joelene Mackenzie in favour of more creative names that the monolingual English-speaking life-savers found virtually impossible to say: Oxwagonia Papenfoes-Suikerrietsaad; Kruisementa Dewaal Van Oskraalsuid. Joelene, bright as a button and overcome with energy, would sometimes embellish the story without even our instruction, and, following the crackle of the loudspeakers, we’d hear: ‘Your attention please, attention please, we have a little lost girl, six years old with a pink two-piece, her name is Voelver —’ and then we’d hear the poor life-saver asking her to repeat her name and he’d say: ‘Voelverskrikker Vandewenterspoel.’ You could hear her behind him correcting his pronunciation and then, a bit we had not even coached her: ‘. . . she says she has been walking around for two days and she’s begging her mother Maria Magdalena Vande — what — Vandewenterspoel or her brother Langeraad-Asparagus Vandewenterspoel to come and fetch her because she’s very hungry.’ And then I would go up by which time the life-savers had given little Voelverskrikker Vandewenterspoel hamburgers, cool drinks and ice cream. She’d run from the life-saver and leap into my arms. And turning on my thickest Transvaal accent I’d thank them and ask whether there was anything us Vandewenterspoels from Brakwatersverdriet could do to express our gratitude. We could send springbok biltong, fresh milk, wonderful rich farm butter, maybe half a sheep? And nervously the men in the bulging red Speedoswould say no, they were not allowed to receive gifts from the public at large.
At first I had laughed off Aunt Lena and Uncle Joe’s suggestion that I sing at the Little Top talent contest on South Beach. There was no way I was going up there to make a sight of myself amongst the amateurs for the fifty-rand prize. I was, after all, a boy professional. Then Uncle Joe said he would double the prize money. My interest was pricked. It crossed my mind that amongst the hundreds of thousands of people on the beach could be someone from the Berg. My worst nightmare, being heard by someone from the school. God, imagine Dom hearing about this. But the thought of one hundred rand, a year’s extra pocket money, loomed larger than the embarrassment. Aunt Lena said I should go up in only my Speedo, to show off my body. I refused.
‘Come on, Karl,’ Lena said.
‘You wouldn’t go for Miss South Coast Legs! Why must I go up there in only my Speedo?’
But I did. Thirteen years and two months old, with a black Speedo and a tan begun in East Africa. Another world. I had no idea what to sing. Gounod was as out as biscuits in an orphanage. Right, a bit of Britten’s War Requiem, that would get this audience on my side. Then it came to me: Abba, Dom’s tape to my rescue. With the little orchestra jamming it out behind me, I sang — I did — ‘Waterloo’. Looking out at the ships waiting to enter Durban harbour, I forgot about the screaming horde below me on the white sand. Dispelled any thought of how pathetic I must be looking. I thrust my hips out as I sang, danced and put expression into every word, every beat. Halfway through the song I knew that barring the entry of Jimmy Osmond or Lena Zavaroni, I would win. The crowd loved it. Screamed and cheered and joined with every chorus.
The winner would be chosen by the measure of applause. When the prize was awarded I could have punched the MC in the face. It was not cash, it was a fifty-rand gift voucher for further voice training. Backstage I asked the organisers whether I couldn’t exchange the voucher for cash. They said no. I was beside myself. Uncle Joe now refused to give me the fifty rand he had said he’d double. I boiled and for the rest of the holiday thought up excuses to go as seldom as possible back to the Malibu and to South Beach.
Angry at Uncle Joe for having done me in and wanting Lena on side, I asked whether she had noticed the way he looked at her. ‘Oh the looks are nothing,’ she said, ‘the other night when I stayed over he took out his old filafooi to show to me.’
‘In the middle of the street?’ I asked.
‘No, fool, in the Malibu, when I stayed over and Aunt Lena was taking a shower.’
‘What did you do?’
At first I just looked at it and thought I’d ignore him. Then, when he asked me whether I wanted to touch it, I had a thought.’ Lena smiled and looked away.
‘What thought?’
‘I took it in my hand and then bent down, like I was going to suck it.’
‘You’re lying, Lena!’
‘I swear. And just when it started going stiff and I knew he was all excited I brought my lips down to it and said: “I just want to send a message to my mommy and daddy at home in Toti,” and I started laughing and let it go and he pushed me away and I laughed in his face.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Aunt Lena?’
‘Ag, it would only upset her if she knew he was molesting me.’
The Mackenzies came for New Year’s Eve. Uncle Joe brought cartons full of firecrackers: spirals, Catherine wheels, sky rockets, sparklers. So many we wouldn’t be able to light half. And as we unpacked the Mercedes, I was still thinking of how to broach leaving the school, getting out of the Berg and back to Toti. I was sneezing, unable to control myself. Refused to take antihistamine.
After dinner we sat in the lounge playing Monopoly and watching South Africa’s first ever TV New Year’s message from the Prime Minister. The Brats were getting restless and wanted to light the fireworks. I burst into tears. I stood in the middle of the lounge floor and announced that I didn’t want to return to school.
Through snot and tears I implored Bok and Bokkie not to send me back. I said I couldn’t spend all this money, when Lena, Bernie and Bokkie didn’t even have decent clothes. The outburst must have taken no more than three or four minutes. For all that time their eyes were on me: Bok, sitting in the one big chair. Uncle Joe in the other. Lena on the floor playing Monopoly with Aunt Lena and Bernice. Bokkie sitting on the couch entertaining the Brats.
None of them spoke. When my tears dried and I calmed down, I was overwhelmed with shame. I wanted to leave. I turned, left the lounge and went to my bedroom. Bok came in and said he was taking me for a drive. We drove in his Chevrolet through the deserted streets of Amanzimtoti. Bok asked whether I hadn’t learnt anything at all from Dr Taylor in June. I was now a young man, no longer a little boy. I was not to throw tantrums and scenes in front of our rich family. Like crapping in your own nest, he said, and I heard Mumdeman.
And,’ said Bok, ‘you have to stop turning every cake recipe into a melodrama.’ He told me things were going very, very well with his business. That I had to trust him. Happiness was in my hands! I should go back to school, leave adults to worry about adult business, not saddle myself with worries; that being away from home was turning me into a man. I felt better. What subjects are you taking, he asked. I want to take Latin and Art, I said. Why not Accountancy, he insisted. Because I’m not interested, I said. Don’t you want to make money, one day, he asked. I can make money with Art, I said. Okay, just for one year and you must balance it with rugby and sport, Philistine, okay? Okay, Bok.
