by Mark Behr
All I wanted in that instant was for you to turn that car around and take me back to school. To Jacques. Or to Dominic. Yes, to Dominic. I didn’t care if I ever saw Jacques again. Liar, traitor. User. Bok. I wanted to go to the Websters and live with them in comfort.
With Dominic whom I trusted. Or I could live on the loose with Uncle Klaas. Anywhere. Anywhere where worry is elsewhere.
Like here. I walk up to the reception area, looking for Bok.
He is talking to Mr Reynolds. I browse the shelves. Go back out into the sun.
But for a few minutes around my arrival and the braai at Uncle Michael’s, Bernice hardly left her room for more than a sandwich at lunch and later for supper. She now has a desk in her room, so she no longer uses the dining-room table. Though already in the past having seemed to me in a world removed from my own, Bernice now was slipping away definitively. Bernice’s preparation for matric exams, I told Lena, is her ticket even further out of our lives. Bernice’s commitment to her studies, to trying to get a university exemption even though she will never go to university, I had found inspiring. There were days she came out with swollen eyes, as if she were worried sick or had been crying, and I wanted to comfort her, impart my knowledge to her, tell her that I would go and write the exams for her. It struck me as profoundly adult, to be studying for exams like that, to the exclusion of all else. For a day or two I was attracted to the idea of comrtiitting myself to my school work, getting As for each school subject, including Maths. Wiping Niklaas Bruin off the map. I saw myself sitting in Bernice’s old room, which will become mine once she has left the house. Unless of course we end up in a flat. Around me I saw bookshelves and pens and pencils, large ledgers and maybe even a typewriter. Then I realised it was not myself immersed in schoolbooks I was dreaming of, it was a vision of myself one day when I am a writer. I will be working like this, day in and day out, without taking a break. With a wife or a maid bringing in cups of tea or real freshly squeezed orange juice. Not the Oros concentrate I mix and top up with ice and quietly take in to my sister’s room.
There were occasional phone calls from her schoolmates. Stephanie called when she got back from London. Within minutes of Bernice being on the phone with our cousin, Bokkie was slamming down pots and pans in the kitchen, muttering, loud enough for us all to hear: ‘Wouldn’t say that lady was on the verge of writing matric exams.’ And after replacing the receiver Bernice came into the kitchen and said: ‘She only wanted to tell me about her trip.’
‘Stephanie’s so-called trip will not get you through matric exams.’ ‘We were also talking about my exams, Bokkie.’
‘What does Stephanie De Man know about your school work?’ Bokkie snapped. ‘She was a zero on a contract at school and now she’s trying to turn you into the same.’
And Bernice left quietly. Back into her room.
Sunning myself on the Alcamino’s bonnet. Still waiting for Bok, I wonder what Bokkie knows about Stephanie’s ‘so-called’ trip. Am I, after all, not the only one in our family who knows why she went?
Alette I saw only a few times. When I went to meet her and Lena and walk them back from the Pahla station. Her pieces for the Grade Five exam are tough but she’s in top shape and hopes for a distinction. I told her about the Schumann Dominic is preparing. She asked about the funeral in Pietermaritzburg and I spoke about the music we sang; that Mathison had cancelled our proposed debate on the French Revolution as a gesture of respect to Ma’am and because it bordered on bringing politics into schools. Lena said the old spinster Miss Hope told her she had seen me at the funeral. Then I told them about the prac teacher, Mr Loveday, who came for two weeks to stand in for Ma’am. How I had introduced myself to Mr Loveday as Oscar, and Dominic introduced himself as Johann Sebastian. And for a few days the whole class and thus also Loveday had called me Oscar and Dominic Johann Sebastian. After one lunch Loveday came back to class and told us he knew my name was Karl and Dominic’s was not
Johann Sebastian and he didn’t find the joke or the class’s complicity the least bit amusing. I told Alette that something had started happening in my reading: I now see that Wilbur Smith is entertaining. It’s like being in an adventure. But writers like Oscar Wilde, and John Steinbeck — you must read Dorian Gray and East of Eden, Alette — are genius. For they tell their stories in ways, in words, that you will never forget because they resonate with our own lives. Wilbur Smith is cheap and easy trash.
We said goodbye to Alette in Dan Pienaar and moved on to Bowen. Lena and I started speaking about Coen and Mandy, about how exhilarating that they’ve sold everything and are going to sail around the world. ‘Much better going for a few years than just for a week like Stephanie,’ Lena said. Clearly, she doesn’t know, I think, or else she would have let on then. While we don’t see Coen and Mandy often, we adore them. They “are with it, not old-fashioned. Uncle Coen once told us outright that he has had himself ‘fixed’ so that Mandy won’t ever get pregnant. It’s called a vasectomy and Bokkie says that’s the way of the future.
Lena spoke about how tough it was playing provincial softball. Softball was not a school sport, but she’s sure she’ll get full honours for sport next year. Next year is Standard Nine and she’s hoping that when she goes to matric she’ll be a prefect. When she asked whether I was coming to Port Natal next year I answered that I’d like to stay another year in the Berg. Without saying anything out loud, I could see resentment in her expression. ‘I won’t take Bok’s money.’ I said, ‘I’m ‘going to ask Aunt Lena if she won’t pay.’
And where do you think she’s going to get that kind of money?’ ‘From Uncle Joe.’
‘Do you think he’ll pay to keep you there amongst the moffies?’ He doesn’t have to know she’s paying.’
‘Dream on, Karl De Man,’ sounding too much like Bokkie when she’s angry with Bok and she drops the Bok and calls him Ralph De Man.
‘Aunt Lena,’ Lena continued, ‘can get hundreds of rands. Not thousands.’
And then, when we walked in the gate and passed beneath the Natal Mahogany, there was Bokkie, calling out that I am now the same height as Lena. At once we stood back to back — she’s wearing shoes, I shouted, ever so slightly elevating myself on my toes, making myself an inch taller than my sister. Indeed, two days before my fourteenth birthday, and it was the first time I could face Lena, eye to eye. But, somehow, I am not proud of it.
Still no sign of Bok. I begin to feel irritated. I remember other times I have waited for him while he was doing business. Waiting, waiting, waiting for Bok. Waiting for the money.
Poor cousin Stephanie: Before she got back from London, Bernice took a break from studying to come with us for a braai up at Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain’s. James took me upstairs to show me how he paints his eggs. Uncle Michael has built him a drawing — and worktable that folds out from the wall. I envied him. Above the work-table, on the walls, were racks with books and bottles of paintbrushes and paints. The books, mostly of watercolours and pastel landscapes, do nothing for me, though I said they are ‘really good’. Kitsch is the word I had wanted to use. James’s own drawings are all like magazine illustrations, good, but unoriginal. They tell me nothing of what he sees. James probably doesn’t even know what an Impressionist or Expressionist is.
Then James closed his bedroom door and said he wanted to tell me something I was not to repeat. To anyone. I at once recoiled, thought he might confess to me that he was homosexual. Something that had been said about him since he was about seven and started doing the flower arrangements. I wanted to get out of the room, did not want to know anything about his urges, which have always felt directed at me. Since we were kids, always trying, trying to get aglimpse of my dick, always trying to touch it in the pool, or when we showered together. I find him repulsive, unlike Stephanie, whose cunt I can still fantasize about slipping into, smelling. James’s urges seem as though they could rub off and infect me and make me sick. Like his kitsch art. If I were to look at it for too l
ong, spend too much time in his room, I may start to paint like him.
Once I had promised not to tell, he spilt the beans: Stephanie was not in London on holiday. She had actually gone to her Irish uncle in London for an abortion. He overheard it when she was begging Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain for money. She had no idea who the father was. She had to sell Herbie to get enough money to go because abortions cost thousands. And it was illegal in South Africa. If anyone finds out, Stephanie could go to prison.
‘Promise you won’t tell,’ he again begged. I again swore, half hearing myself, thinking only of how ghastly, how horrendous, to fall pregnant. Fall pregnant, like falling into shame. Falling in love. Falling asleep. Falling ill. Falling apart. Falling pregnant. My mind embroidered, flying between Stephanie and my sisters: what will happen if Lena or Bernice falls pregnant? They’d probably just do what black women did if they don’t want a child: stick a knitting needle up their vaginas and dig around in the womb till they kill the foetus. The thought horrifies me. Again I swore not to tell a soul and then moved from the room, down the passage, descending the stairs as if levitating. What if Bernice fell pregnant and didn’t tell? Had the baby and gave it up for adoption? What if she thought she couldn’t have a baby because of what happened to her at Mkuzi? But say the doctors were wrong and her insides were okay after all! Would I tell if it happened to me? The shame of it. Sheets of shame descending like drapes over our house, enveloping the family. And if the story were to get out? The church! The disgrace of the extended family: shame by association. When Lena was my age and I spotted sanitary pads in her cupboard, I imagined that she may be pregnant. I went to Bernice who explained that Lena had started having periods. Menstruation,that’s all. Before getting to Dominic and the dictionary, I had for a while imagined that men too had periods. Dominic said that the closest men got to periods were wet dreams.
By the time I was outside in the yard beside Aunt Siobhain’s papyrus bush, pregnancy had become my worst nightmare. What if I had made Alette pregnant? Though that was impossible for we had only touched each other, never stuck it in, and a girl cannot get pregnant without penetration and orgasm. But what if it happens to one of my sisters? I am certain that Bernice is doing It with Robert. Everyone does It. But everyone knows that FLs break. Lena, who doesn’t have a boyfriend, is on the pill for her skin, but as for Bernice, she has the smoothest complexion in the family and there is, I think, no way Bokkie will allow her on the pill. Yet, Bernice is the one with the boyfriend. I had to speak to her. She had to go on the pill at once. I thought again of Alette saying to me after Malawi: ‘Were too old for that now.’ One step further and this could have been us. I think of Jacques and Dominic. But that was just playing, jerking off. No, if you stuck it into a starfish, could that not pass for fucking? Jacques and Dominic and I; that’s full-on laying with a man as you do with a woman. I must become a good Christian, it cannot go on like this. My sins will catch up to me. What if a car runs me over, and I die?
The thought of Stephanie having an illegitimate child, of one of my sisters being put in the other time, knocked up, having a bun in the oven, being on the pole, depressed me. I must warn them that boys are after only one thing. That is all we speak about at school. They should take a lesson from Stephanie. And don’t stick knitting needles up yourselves, Lena, Bernice. Tell me, I’ll find the money, I promise you, I will, to send you to London for an abortion. Bernice, I repeat to myself in the Mkuzi sun, has to go on the pill. How stupid this backward country is! Not allowing women to have abortions. How far ahead of us America and England are.
I never got around to speaking to either of them, I think as Bokcomes grinning down the selasto path towards the Alcamino where I sit on the bonnet. Waiting.
We’ve dropped off our bags and groceries at the rondavel and had a quick sandwich. As we head for the hides and the Msumu pan, Bok regales me with the tales just relived by him and Hugo Reynolds in the warden’s office: when a ranger lost all his front teeth as a roll of barbed wire fell from a truck and struck him on the mouth near the Umsunduzi — Hugo says he still takes out his dentures to show everyone when he tells the story. When Boy shot the poacher through the artery and the man bled to death; Jonas is apparently still a guard somewhere in Umfolozi. The Parks Board is planning on settling elephant into Hluhluwe and the two reserves may, after all these years, be joined into one including the corridor. When the white rhino calf got stuck in the mud at Masinga hide and how Jonas and Boy had to distract the cow’s attention so that Bok and Willy Hancox and the other rangers could pull the calf free. The impala culling — Willy has probably forgotten what a lousy shot he was, Bok laughs. Taking poachers to the Ubombo police station, at least twice a month — Hugo Reynolds says poaching is worse now than before and they’re trying to expand co-operation with the LPs — local population. How sad Bok was when he had to shoot a black rhino cow close to our house where she had almost been strangled by a poacher’s lasso, strung between two lala palms; I thought it was white, I say; no, black, saddest, most difficult moment of his life, shooting that cow, more difficult than shooting Vonk or putting down Suz and Chaka. How horses are no longer used to follow up darted rhinos — now it’s helicopters — which makes it so much more effective and efficient. Another problem now are the bush fires, seems many are deliberately set to chase the game north across the Mkuzi River where the LPs can kill them off. In his day they made thorough, broad fire breaks; they had to, it was the worst drought in human memory. All the catches they made of nyalas, warthogs, impalas, for export to the few private game reserves in the region — there’s increased interest in those; soon they’ll be popping up like mushrooms, not necessarily Mala Mala smart, but just small private game reserves where the wilderness can be protected and appreciated. Ian Player has done his part, expanding the way South Africa and the world see the necessity for protecting wilderness. Tourism is the future for South Africa. I listen with rapt attention, even as our eyes scan the innards of the bush. Wish he could be back here. Work here.
I am closer to Bok now than I have been since we left Umfolozi. I want to hold him here, keep him here, never again have to experience him outside of this. This is the way I want him. Never again in that garage of his that is his office where I take in a man who only resembles the father I want. Behind his desk in the centre of the garage, surrounded by his shelves of curios. Where I want to find a way to stop kissing him and Bokkie hello and goodbye. Where I’ve outgrown kissing them. Here I could do it. But not there on the phone. Where his manner is that of a man who pretends to own the world, where, but for what Bokkie has told me, I could, without blinking, for a few hours believe that he actually does. Here, where his strident knowledge of the bush is always tempered by either love for it or his humility before it. Not near where the empty white space on the back wall above the trinkets and bangles has nothing other than dust ovals, oudines like scars, no, wounds, marking the spots where once my trophies hung. Wounds about which he says nothing, and I do not consider asking. Where I do not want to hear him tell me a story that will only succeed in making me feel worse. Let the dust ovals against the white wall sit between us as an inheritance lost that will eventually grow scabs that for some reason will make us both feel better; whether because I do not wish to see him shamed into lying, again, or whether it is because my not forgiving him makes me powerful with the brooding indignation of self-righteousness. I do not know and don’t care to explore further the issue of what was mine and pilfered. Where, when at first he asked me to accompany him on this trip, Ihad wanted to say no, I have to work on Latin, for I cannot, for a moment, imagine what we will say to each other. But then, his overzealous demeanour, as though offering me the riches of King Solomon’s mines, tells me he is going north to collect from the maids the smoking pipes he has commissioned, for ethnic pipes are in high demand and even though the Zulus don’t usually make them — they’re really Xhosa — they will be a hit if marketed overseas as authentic Zulu crafts. Where he
knows the pipes will be a major success. Where I am not concerned with the pipes. Where I already know they will fail. Where he and Bokkie have to seduce me by confessing that it is my birthday gift, that we’ll be coming to Mkuzi and Umfolozi, before I am thrilled and ready to jump into the van. Where I am not concerned with my father’s absence. Where I take unbridled delight in it. Where my school report is ridiculed: A for Art, A for English, C for everything else other than Maths, which has dropped to an alltime low: an E. Where all he can say is: ‘This is the first and last year you’ll be taking Art. You will spend that time from now on doing Maths.’Where Bokkie says: ‘We might not be able to afford Parents’ Weekend in November but it’s not necessary for you to say anything to Lukas or Dominic about why were not coming. Perhaps you can just say Mumdeman is ill or that we can’t leave Bernice while she’s writing matric exams. Auntie Babs can come and fetch you to the farm for the weekend, or do you think maybe you’ll go out with Lukas’s family?’Where I say I’ll go with Lukas s family but know I’ll go with the Websters, and I try not to look at my father, who again doesn’t say a word. Lets his lackey bear the bad tidings. Bokkie of the bad tidings. Where she calls us to supper while Lena and I are watching The World at War and when we don’t move she mutters that instead of eating our fingers in front of the TV we should come and eat the food she has slogged over. ‘Look at the two of them, like baboons with those fingers in their mouths,’ and both Lena and I drop our hands, but only I get up and go to the table, saying sarcastically, ‘We plan to eat till we reach our elbows. Then see if you’ll still love us.’ And Bokkie glares at me, and I knew then already, that when we left to come here, she would weep as we drove off, and I’d regret, deeply, the night’s cheek. And again Bokkie calls Lena, now louder, to come and eat because the food’s getting cold. And Lena still doesn’t look up from the TV and says: ‘Just wait, I want to finish watching this.’ And Bok jumps up from the table and slaps my sister across the face. ‘I will not have you speaking to your mother like that.’ And I hate him. If I had a sharper knife, I could plunge it into his back. Let him ever, ever, smack me through the face! I will find a way, Jesus Christ, I will find a way to destroy this man, somehow. And where, less than an hour later after a silent dinner, he and Lena are again the best of friends, as though nothing happened. And I alone am left hating him. As though on my and Lena’s behalf.
