Embrace

by Mark Behr

  The mountains stood in a blue haze. The veld an unrestrained verdant, almost neon, where but a month before across the yellow and red of winter, black residues of fire had scabbed the horizons. Off the gravel road near Estcourt was a sign pointing to the Gerrit Maritz Memorial. I said I wondered what it would have been like for us to have been part of the Great Trek, to have come over these awesome mountains to face the Zulus. If only the Boers had come twenty years earlier we would have dealt with the regal Chaka, not the evil Dingaan. Chaka was the greatest Zulu King. The first adult book I read when I was ten, I boasted, called The Washing of the Spears, spoke of Chaka as one of the greatest leaders the world had ever seen. This,exactly here where we were now travelling, was where the first Boers had settled after leaving the Cape Colony under British rule. The Napoleonic Wars. How crazy that what Napoleon did in France determined what happened here on the southern tip of Africa. From near here, right here somewhere, Retief had ridden out to meet Dingaan who murdered him. Then, the Boer commando to face the Zulu hordes at the Battle of Bloodriver. We were driving through the blood, sweat and tears of Boer history. ‘Don’t you think that’s incredible?’ I asked. ‘That all of this, and right where the school is, and all the hotels, and even where our forts are, each of these roads, are all places where blood has been spilt?’

  ‘No, my boy,’ Jacques snorted, and placed his hand on my leg, ‘I’m a Cilliers. That’s why I’m here and not dead like Retief. We Cilliers men already stayed at home with the women and children over a century ago.’We laughed. I said I thought I may have wanted to go on commando, especially with the horses and being out in the wild. He said commando constituted more than horses, cowboys and crooks, and the great outdoors. That I had a far too romantic idea of war.

  In Estcourt we stopped to have my knee inspected and the stitches removed. I could see the scar wasn’t at all bad but kept up the limp. He asked whether I was hungry and when I said no bought us icecream cones with Flakes in the centre before we went on towards Maritzburg. How’s the wound, he asked and I put my foot on the dashboard, lifting my knee so he could see. Sore? Resting his hand on my thigh, pushing the shorts higher. Not any more, I said. I’m sure it will get better if you keep your hand there.

  The campus was crawling with students dressed in jeans and shorts and leather sandals. I felt like I could be somewhere in America, in a movie. The buildings were lovely, like relics of an era gone by, and I imagined being a student there, scurrying into the entrance beneath the red-brick clock tower on my way to write a Roman Dutch law exam. When I told Jacques how attractive I foundthe buildings he asked whether I had ever seen Hilton College, the private boys’ school just up the hill. I said I hadn’t, and he suggested we stop there on the way back to the Berg.

  At the College of Music he collected annotated sheet music from a secretary and then took me into an office where I met the SABC orchestra’s chief violinist, a man whose name I can no longer recall. He shook my hand and said he had enormous respect for us doing this complex piece of music. Then he and Jacques spoke about the strengths and weaknesses of the orchestra and the alterations Jacques had made in orchestration. They drew up a tentative agenda for the three-day rehearsal and the recordings due to take place in Jo’burg end of November. A timetable and meal plans were discussed. I sat listening, taking in the office and the two men intensely engaged across the desk from each other. As we left, the violinist said he’d see me in Jo’burg and that I was to wish the choir well. He and the other members of the orchestra and adult choir were on tenterhooks to meet us all, to hear us sing.

  Back in the car, Jacques again asked after my knee and I said it was fine. We spoke about the concert, barely two months away. It would be the biggest he’d ever conducted. He wasn’t sure whether he was excited or afraid. No, he said in response to a question, he wasn’t really concerned at the live TV broadcast, more about the arrangement he had done of Beethoven’s work. ‘The Mass is something of a sacred cow,’ he said, ‘and I’m not sure how the audience or the press will respond to a boy quartet and to the sections without the adult voices.’We were good, he said, but perhaps it was just as well the SABC choir was with us. It was, he had admitted to himself already when doing the arrangement, too much for boys to do alone. I asked whether he was happy with how things were going. He said yes, we were outdoing ourselves. Sometimes he couldn’t believe how we — and specially the Juniors — had managed to get our heads and voices around sections of the Mass any adult choir would find a challenge. ‘But don’t tell them I said that!’ he laughed. ‘I don’t want any of youresting on your laurels. Better to keep you all guessing. That’s my “experience with any performer. The director, the conductor, the maestro, should not give affirmation too soon. That keeps the performer on his toes. Here’s the Hilton turn-off. What’s the time? Want to go have a quick squiz?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, if were late, we can miss it,’ I said, but he took the off ramp. Left, then crossed the bridge over the highway. Following the narrow tarmac road we passed through green rolling hills. The neat white buildings of Hilton College sat like an extended English Tudor complex on perfecdy tended lawns amidst rose gardens and enormous trees. It looked centuries old, like how I imagined Oxford or Europe where we would be performing over Christmas. The entrance, from which ran a winding road up into the buildings, was marked by an ornate metal gate.

  ‘It’s like a hotel complex,’ I said.

  ‘Hilton Cpllege is money being educated to make money,’ he said and smiled. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come to school here?’

  ‘Yes, but it must cost a fortune! If our school looks like it does with all the money our parents pay, this must be ten times more. Look .. .’Two or three teams were doing warm-up exercises, running, falling onto their stomachs, doing push-ups, kicking a soccer ball, sprinting to where two trainers waited.

  ‘I’m not sure what the school fees are, though I doubt they’re much more than ours. Ours is an arts school, Karl, you know there’s no money in music. And the people who come to this place and Michaelhouse and Kearsney have been sending boys here for generations. It’s a family business. Enormous endowments by grandfathers who want the place kept up. They leave half the money to their sons and the other half to the school. That’s why it looks like this. And were only twenty years old. Maybe with time things will develop in our part of the woods.’

  He had gone to Pretoria Boys High, he said. Not a bad school, but nothing like Hilton. And he spoke briefly about growing up in Sabiein the Eastern Transvaal, where his parents were carpenters. That’s near the Kruger Park, isn’t it, I asked. Yes. Both his father and mother made furniture. Yellow-wood, stinkwood and teak. All cut from the forests in the region. He told me to take a look at his dressing table when I next came to his room. It was stinkwood. A gift from his parents. I asked whether he had siblings and he said he had a younger brother with whom he was very close. His brother and his wife, he said, had recently joined the family business. ‘Were a very close family,’ he said. ‘I admire my mother and father. And they think my brother and I the best things since sliced bread. Like all parents, I suppose.’ His father had bought him a piano when he was six. While his mother remained in the workshop on a Saturday, his father had driven him all the way to Pretoria once a week for lessons with the best tutor in the Transvaal. Late afternoon, driving back to Sabie, he would practise what he’d learnt on the dashboard of the car, humming or singing the score while his father behind the wheel kept time, like a metronome, tick-tick-tick-tick. His being the Berg’s senior conductor made his parents very proud. They were coming to the Durban performance, as were his brother and sister-in-law. And they’d be at Jan Smuts to see us off when we left for Europe. ‘Take a look on my dressing table,’ he said, ‘there are photographs of them all stuck to the mirror.’ I responded that we never had the light on in his room and that I was never there for long enough to go around inspecting the furniture or the pictures, a plaintive chord stringing my voice
.

  ‘Ooh, la, la,’ he said, putting his hand on my head. ‘Are you feeling a little neglected?’

  ‘No, I’m just saying . . .’

  ‘We can’t, you know,’ he said, ‘get much more than pleasure — simple pleasure — from each other in a place like this. It’s too dangerous. In Europe you and I are going to spend more time together. How’s that sound?’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  *

  The sun was an hour or less above the mountains to our west. Injasuti, Cathkin, Champagne, Ndedema Dome, Gatberg, Organ Pipe Pass, the Pyramid, Inner Horn, Outer Horn, Cathedral Peak, the Saddle, up north into Mponjwana, the Inner and Outer Needles, Ifidi Buttress, Mount Oompie, the Amphitheatre, the Sentinel and Mont-aux-Sources from where all the country’s rivers sprang and the Drakensberg inexplicably turned into the Maluties. Six, eight deep, they drifted into paling purple rows, diffuse layers of horizon. God, how in that instant I adored you. How I could have wanted to love all of you: your wealth, your poverty, your black and white and brown and yellow and tan, your talking in millions, your cities, locations, your passive and angered and indifferent, your children with games and songs and bombs, mothers, fathers, your ancestors, your health and disease to envelop from every conceivable side my body and let your grass and sandstone and trees and water and air enter each pore of my skin; take me; how then, I thought, I would one day write verse upon verse to celebrate your splendour even beyond the precision of human words.

  On the dust road from Estcourt he glanced at his watch. He asked whether I had ten minutes to spare. I grinned and nodded. Knew at once what he meant and said a quick yes. For half the day I had wanted to touch him, my penis going hard and soft sporadically throughout the trip. Now, as if permission had been given for my desire to take flight, as if I’d been told my lust was not out of place, I slid my hand between his legs. Self-conscious, stared from the front window. We turned from the Loskop road. Heading down a deserted road into a pine plantation I wondered whether the land belonged to the Therons. Amongst the pines were scattered patches of wattle and old eucalyptus, their white stems peeling biltongs of bark. For a moment I was thrilled at the prospect of us being discovered, perhaps by one of the Therons. Trespassers, caught in flagrante delicto — while the crime still blazes! The car hidden from the road, we sat back in our seats. He leant over and kissed me. I worried that my breathmight be smelly this late in the day, wished I had brushed harder in the morning.

  ‘Lets get out,’ I whispered, turning from his face, but he, trying to keep his mouth to mine, said it was too dangerous and we had to hurry. His hand was inside my shorts. I felt embarrassed feeling how wet I must have been even before he touched me. I wanted to be outside where we could lie down on the mat of copper pine needles. Where we could kiss and cuddle, and I could be on top of him.

  ‘This is too uncomfortable,’ I said, trying to hold my breath and putting my hand onto his. ‘Please, let’s get out.’

  ‘Okay,’ he smiled, ‘but this must be quick. Were going to be late for choir.’ He leant against a wattle and pulled me to him. I had never smelt him like this, unwashed, skin and sweat mingling with pine and eucalyptus. He knelt in front of me. I looked down on his head of black curls, the lashes resting on the white skin beside his nose, which broke the arch of his lips around my penis. His nose seemed broader than my shaft in his mouth and for some reason I felt the need to thrust my hips, to hide the whole thing from sight. I held onto the tree, my fingers clutching the rough bark. Closed my eyes. Feeling myself close, I stopped him. Tried to pull him up, but he had to do it himself. Then I turned him so that he was backed to the tree. I knelt, smiled up at him and felt the excitement of being almost adult, so able to manoeuvre him. For an instant I wished again that we could be seen. He cautioned me to be careful of my knee, not to get dirt in the wound. His trousers were down around his bandy legs, the penis arching out, the head half exposed, a crimson-purple emerging from the gaping grey foreskin. I took it in my mouth, and almost gagged as it touched the back of my throat or the glottis, had to pull away. I worked the foreskin with my left hand while my right was in my own loins, letting go when I was too close. I wished I could take longer to come, more like him. He moaned and I pushed my forehead against his belly, enjoyed hearing his sounds. I removed my lips and with both hands kept at it, watching the crimson head now coverednow exposed by the foreskin, beautiful, his hips pushed forward and then the squirt, shooting, dripping over my fingers, his hands in my hair, again putting my mouth over it, licking him, shivers from him, bringing myself to climax, looking down, watching me leak over my fingers onto the pine needles. Feeling instantly dirty and disgusted with myself.

  ‘Were late. Were late!’ he said, pulling a face and tugging up his trousers and tying his belt. I rose and pulled up my shorts, spotted the three red welts of mosquito bites on my upper thigh. I brushed grains of dirt from the wound and now felt my knee ache. The back of his shirt was stained by gum from the wattle. I pulled off the long slither and stuck it in my mouth, chewing, wanting to get rid of his taste.

  We raced back up to the main road. It was almost sunset and we knew there was no way we would be on time. Dust flew behind us. He told me to fasten my safety belt. Seemed angry. We didn’t speak until he had parked the car in his bay and we walked swiftly towards the entrance. The sound of the Mass choir in warm-ups came from the auditorium. ‘The Maritzburg meeting took an hour and a half. Okay.’

  ‘Just over an hour and a half’ I said.

  The choir’s eyes did not move from Raubenheimer as Jacques and I walked into the hall. I cut through two rows to mount the middle bench. My voice joined the voices around me. My eyes joined the eyes on Raubenheimer; did not venture to Jacques who stood with his head bowed, listening. When Raubenheimer was satisfied he stopped us. Said, ‘Sir,’ as he nodded to Jacques and took his place in the front line.

  ‘Good sound. Thanks, Sarel,’ he said and nodded to the accompanist who moved to the piano at once.

  ‘Open up at 82. The minor chord. Apologies for being late. The meeting in Maritzburg lasted longer than I’d anticipated.’ I wanted to smile. That was it. It was true because it had been said. By him.

  I was still scratching . . . miserere nobis . . .

  ‘The priest has already said this is the body of Christ, this is the blood of Christ, okay?’ He nodded at us. ‘For the Catholics,’ he went on, ‘it is not a symbol, it is the real thing, you are literally eating the body that has been sacrificed for your sins. It’s almost the same for us Protestants. But for us it’s a symbol, okay? But you also believe in redemption and being saved because you have Jesus inside your body. You’ve eaten of the body, at least symbolically. When we join with the orchestra I want you to listen very closely to the instruments . . . Incidentally, they’re all looking forward to hearing you . . .’ And all I could think of was getting upstairs to see why my thigh would not stop burning. I was now certain it had to have been a hairy caterpillar. The moment we broke up I’d run to dab on some Savlon to stop the irritation.

  At supper Dom and Lukas asked about the trip. I told them the doctor had said my knee was fine — maybe a bit of water on it; that Jacques and I had had an ice cream; that the meeting at Maritzburg had lasted a boring eternity. Mervy wanted to know about the violinist and I tried to describe what he looked like; gave as full a report as I could, elaborating on the timetable for the Jo’burg rehearsals and recordings. Saying how excited the violinist had said the Philharmonic was about the joint performance. I said I’d missed most of the meeting as I’d been walking around the campus talking to students.

  During prep I raced through the Latin homework Bruin said Ma’am had given. Then fell to work on an essay I was trying to write in the style of Herman Charles Bosman.

  Unannounced, Dom came to my bed that night.

  ‘Why didn’t you say you were coming? It’s not Saturday,’ I whispered, our heads beneath the bedspread.

  ‘I missed you today,�
� he answered. ‘Where’s your torch?’

  ‘In the locker. No, let’s leave it, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’We faced each other in the pitch dark. When he spoke Ismelt the toothpaste from his mouth. Moved my head closer to his, till our lips almost touched.

  ‘I missed you too,’ I said.

  ‘I’m envious, you know,’ he whispered.

  ‘Of what?’ I asked. He said he envied me spending the day with Cilliers, and me getting to meet the lead violinist. I said there was nothing to be envious about. It had all been quite laborious and I’d have preferred to return to school after my stitches had been removed. Dom said he didn’t believe me, whispered that I must have felt happy meeting the violinist. ‘You’ve begun taking our music seriously, Karl. Haven’t you? So you must have felt a little grand at meeting the big shot?’

  ‘I suppose, yes. But I didn’t even know he was the big shot.’

  ‘He’s the leader of the orchestra.’ Dom said and I answered that I hadn’t realised.

  Dominic changed the topic and said he was about to start serious rehearsing for his Grade Eight exams. That he had to use every free hour behind the piano and every hour in bed to sleep. ‘I really need to concentrate. I don’t think we should do this again till after my exams. Okay?’ I whispered no, it was not okay, but I understood. In an instant I was concerned that he suspected me and Cilliers, was at once afraid that he was withdrawing, that he no longer cared for me and was finding an excuse to keep from seeing me.

  ‘Dom, is everything okay? Is something wrong, or is it really only the exam?’ He brought his mouth to my lips and kissed me, moved his arm over my back and pulled himself closer.