by Mark Behr
‘Those so-called children are burning down this goddamn country! Are you still hanging around with Dominic Webster? Let me tell you, under a socialistic black government in Tanzania, we lost our farms. Everything. There is not a single black country — barring Malawi and Botswana — where you’re allowed to own anything. Everything belongs to the state. You can have a crap and your crap belongs to the government. Do you want that? Do you want everything to be taken from us for a second time? Answer me, Karl!’
I remain quiet, afraid, but for once do not want to bend before his anger. We don’t have anything for them to take, anyway, Bok. The bank is taking the house back, anyway. ‘Did they take our farms, Bok, or,’ now almost in a whisper, ‘did you leave before they could take our farms?’
He is rattled. As much as I am terrified. I was — he must hear — hoping to expose a lie or a story that has become lore. And in so doing I’m accusing him of being a coward.
‘We left when we saw there was no hope. Our farm was next on the list, One and the same thing.’
Uncle Klaas was right. The land had not been taken. Not yet. Our flight was pre-emptive. The whole family has been in on the lie. Should be ashamed of themselves. And then, as if knowing exactly how to deflate my judgement he says: ‘I took my wife and daughters . . . and the son I thought I had,’ he pauses, ‘and we put a few measly possessions on a boat. My wife and daughters, and the son I thought I had came by ship. I, like a number of others had to flee in secret by plane. And in this country, this country of hope, I againjoined my wife and daughters because I loved them and the son I thought I had.’
I hang my head in shame. My father is angry, but more, he looks as if I’ve pulled his heart out. I do not know where my allegiance lies. Without looking him in the eye, staring into the flames, I speak: ‘Maybe it was wrong for them to take your farm. But that doesn’t make right what we re doing to black people in this country. That is what you and Bokkie have always taught us.’
‘Exactly. Your mother and I have taught you to respect good black people. Not kaffirs, but good blacks. Many blacks are the salt of the earth, not like some whites. And that’s what the homeland policy is for, so that they can live separately in their own countries and be governed by their own people. And when they have developed sufficiently, they may even get a vote in South Africa. But look at the way the schoolkids are behaving.’
I say I don’t feel like going to Willy Hancox. Does he mind going alone?
He says I’m going. And if I don’t, I want to say, will you do to me what you did to Lena? Slap me across my face till I submit. I’m feeling sick, I lie. I have a headache and I’m nauseous.
‘Well stay here then. Jissis . . .’ He gets up and goes inside. Gets dressed into longs and a shirt. I hear the bunch of keys, a six-pack of beers in his hand. Before going to the truck he comes and stands in front of me, forcing me to look up into his eyes.
‘And you will carry on playing rugby, do you hear me?’
I look at him: ‘I beg your pardon, Bok?’
‘Do you hear me, Karl?’
‘Why, Bok?’ I ask, less about the rugby than to understand why he is speaking to me like this. About rugby, when a second before we’d been on Jimmy Carter. How did we get from an election thousands of miles in another country, across the Atlantic Ocean, to me playing rugby?
‘Because I say so,’ he says and smiles, cocking his head at me.
I avert my eyes. I stare into the fire.
‘Because sport builds character. Because art turns people into lazy perverts. Because you’re a strapping, big, strong boy. Look at your body; you were born to play team sport. Contact sport.’
I was not a big strong boy when, when, who knows when you started hating me, I want to say but cannot. With a smirk, a sneer of suppressed rage, he paces forward until he is almost on top of me. Again I have to look up when he speaks: ‘You will play rugby until you become the man I want you to be. No communist kaffir-loving queer will ever set foot in my house. Tell that to that artsy fairy Dominic Webster and his family too. With my compliments. No, actually, I don’t care whether you turn into a PFP or a communist or an HNP or anything. Go to Botswana and marry a black girl and breed coloured brats. Go to your federation — of socialist soviets — for all I care. But you will be a man, I tell you. Even there. If it’s the last, thing I do to you, with my last living breath . . . I will make you a man.’ And he turns on his heel; walks off into the Umfolozi night.
I stare at the fire. Ignore the Alcamino driving off. CKQ. At first I try to laugh it off, tell myself how original his alliteration. CKQ, a trinity of K sounds. Probably accidental alliteration, he doesn’t even know he did it. And then the rhyme: artsy, fairy. You could have been a second-rate poet, Bok. A flock of artsy fucking fairies. You and Lena. A great poet would have added Philistine.
But then the memory of his snigger returns. Gets me. His cruelty. Deliberate cruelty. The one thing Blanche Du Bois could never forgive. And me neither. Forget about ever taking me back to St Lucia. This is enough. I will forgive you everything, Bok. The affairs, the lies, the deception, the shrink, the beatings, the grandiose pretensions, the distortions, the duplicity, the stupidity, your collusion with that school, the assault on Dominic, whom I love more than you have ever loved anyone. Selling off Dademan’s gift to me and bringing me here with what is probably my money anyway! But not the joyous brutalityof that smirk. For that I will never forgive you. That smile, that sneer of unmitigated power: the way you used yours in this instant in this place I have loved more than any place on earth.
That is unforgivable.
The first unforgivable thing I have to hold against my heart. Nothing anyone else has ever done to me or I to them is unforgivable. Only this. For this thing you have no right to ask forgiveness, from me. Or from God. Ever. God who doesn’t exist anyway, but whom I now wish did, so that he could cast you into the eternal flames of hell so that from across the rivers of heaven I can watch you scream and plead.
The flames dance. The long shadows of trees and shrubs run into the bush. Elbows resting on my upper thighs. I displace my elbow from where it is being bored by something hard, uncomfortable in my PT shorts pocket. I think of what he told me in the truck: that I was conceived crossing borders. And now I hate him for it. Not even a clear place of conception. It is your fault that I belong nowhere. Still staring into the flames I push my hand into the elastic and bring the round objects from my pocket, stare at them in my palm. Tambotie seeds. Jumping beans. Six or eight of them. Mkuzi tambotie. Like small balls of dung, rolled by baby dung-beetles. Within seconds the heat of my hand and the fire has them jumping. And then it strikes me: in his coffee. If I ground them and mash them. Just a teaspoonful over his cereal or in his coffee tomorrow morning. No one would ever know. No one would think it had not been an accident. That he accidentally chewed some tambotie. I could say, yes, he was chewing a twig of some sort at Mphafa. If he had eaten here tonight, instead of going to Willy Hancox, I could have strewn it over his meat, like peppercorns.
I’ll keep them, for in case. One day. Some time.
I go inside to fetch my sketch pad. He has left his pack of Paul Revere 30s on his bed. I open the packet and take two cigarettes tothe fire. Light one with a twig and blow out the thick jet of smoke. A natural.
Ever since autumn, once, twice a month I’ve been working on Dominic’s poem, but cannot get it to sound right, let alone finish. Seven months and all I am left with is a long list of words: behold the orange, circular, skin, smooth, indentations, smell, lemon, navel. Tonight I add something at the beginning of the list: Dearest, behold the sphere in your hand: circular, skin, smooth, orange, indentations, lemon, navel, green patched. And I stop, again unable to continue.
I get undressed, now wrapping the tambotie in a handkerchief that I slip into the toe of my veldskoens. Into the cool and crisp sheets of the Natal Parks Board, small rhinos etched into green stripes as monograms. I turn over on my stomach. My thoughts
are of the Berg: school, of choir, of Ma’am, of Dominic, Jacques. Of Bok’s smirk. How did I become your son? What wires were crossed, where, that you and I have been given each other? What is there in me that you are so afraid of me? I sit up. Bok, afraid of me? Jesus, I’m the one who’s scared of him.
Lie down. Get Bok out of my mind by willing myself into my Mkuzi dream. Floating, floating over the brown grass that turns green and greener and greener, and I’m floating I’m gone and beneath me is the grass and I come down towards something in the veld and it’s Bok’s desk just sitting there with hundreds of curios on shelves in the grass and then there’s something lying on top of the desk ledgers and papers and accounts and amongst these is Jacques, with his legs open and naked and his penis stiff on the black hair of his belly and he asks me to put mine into him and I’m standing at the edge of the desk, my hips thrusting, thrusting and he’s telling me he loves me inside him and then there’s laughter and it’s from the curios, the masks, laughing with lips moving and I’m looking at them and my penis is enormous like a stallion broad like a rhino horn from my navel down going in and out of Jacques and then the curios of giraffe and elephant and baboons start to move, still wooden statues butthey’re animate and they run away and hide in the bushes above a river and I’m walking towards the river looking for the animals and the louries while I’m still inside Jacques who has his legs clutched to my waist and on the other side of the river to the right is Dominic and to the left is Uncle Klaas and behind him the Silent One and they’re all calling, ‘Come’ ‘Come,’ and waving their arms for me to come and then behind the Silent One there’s Jonas, smiling at me and I go into the river and pump my squirt into Jacques who dissolves in the cold water while my body shudders. And I wake up. The sheets beneath me slimy and uncomfortable.
Bok, back from the braai, is snoring in the bed across the rondavel. I do dream in colour. Now I know it. In the colours of Gauguin or Dali.
19
Assembly in the quad on the first day back and Mathison makes it official: the European tour is off. A last-minute bid to arrange a trip to’ Israel has failed because of the short notice and restricted time. Mathison says he knows this is a big disappointment to us all and to tlie country; to Mr Cilliers, to the school — particularly to the Standard Sevens who are in their final year here — but for those whore staying, he promises, there will be a magnificent overseas tour in 1977. And, a donor — someone who has requested to remain anonymous — has donated two television sets to the school, so from next year we’ll be able to — applause from the Juniors and Secondaries, most of whom were not part of the International Choir anyway.
I wonder where Jacques is. What is going through his mind. After all the work of the year, all the excitement and planning, the long hours. I wish to see him. To speak to him alone.
Muttering, cursing beneath our breaths, we walk away from assembly into the classroom, which smells of chalk dust and our absence. Even though we have for a week been warned that a cancellation was on the cards, the actual announcement, hearing it from Mathison’s lips, has nipped the bud of lingering hope.
‘Mathison’s out of his mind,’ Dominic says as we take our seats. ‘There will only be more cancellations in future. There won’t be an overseas tour in 1977 either.’
‘I disagree, Dominic,’ Bruin turns his neck and speaks from the front row. ‘I’m sure we’ll always be welcome in Israel. You heard what he said. It was only because of things coming to a head so late that we couldn’t go there.’
‘Who wants to go to Israel, anyway?’ Dominic throws his hands in the air. ‘And why do you think we’ll always be welcome there!’ stressing the last four words dramatically,
‘Israel is South Africa’s friend,’ Mervyn says from his seat near the window. ‘And it’s the home of my people. The Jews and the Afrikaners have very similar histories.’ Dominic rolls his eyes while Mervyn speaks. ‘It’s true, Dom,’ Mervyn goes on. ‘Both suffered the horrors of concentration camps and both overcame adversity because they were chosen by God. Do you think it’s pure coincidence that Israel became a state in the same year as the government was elected here? 1948 is a great year for both countries.’
‘Israel... Our home away from home.’ Dominic almost sings the phrase.
‘You can stop being sarcastic, Webster.’
‘Yes, Bennie!’ Dominic turns to face the back of the class and snarls, ‘Sarcasm is too indirect! I should say: our racist fascist home away from our racist fascist home!’
‘Millions of Jews were murdered in Hitler’s concentration camps, Dom.’ I speak softly, not wanting to join in the discussion but hoping Dominic will stop before he has everyone up in arms.
‘How can you speak to Mervyn like that?’
‘Ignore Webster.’
‘Easy for you, Dom, you’ve been overseas how many times?’
‘Fokken kommunis.’
‘Kafferboetie.’
‘Anti-Semite.’
‘Big shot soloist. Wise guy.’
A glow has spread up Dominic’s neck. Suddenly he interrupts the fiery antagonisms: ‘Why must you always revert to name-calling? Why don’t you argue with me? Give me fucken arguments instead of silencing me with names.’ All heads are turned towards him in the centre of class. ‘I am not the one who’s disappointed by the cancellation of this tour. As far as I’m concerned were only getting our due.’ His eyes fly from Bennie, to Lucas, to Mervyn, across the rest, up and down the rows, and eventually settle on me: ‘If you all are so upset: why don’t you think? Think for a change, instead of running like lemmings towards the cliff. If you can’t feel with your hearts, then at least think with your heads. The one thing my dad has taught me is the difference between treating symptoms and addressing causes. The cancellation of this tour, like all the shit with the sports boycott, this ugly war in Angola, is but a symptom, idiots! It is a symptom of the rotten state in which we live. And don’t think for a second, not one ‘moment, that this will end here. No ways! Dad says it’s going to get worse and worse and worse, until this fascist government is brought to its—’
‘A good morning to you too, Dominic.’ Silence as we turn to face Ma’am, who has stepped into his tirade.
‘You use the word fascist too easily,’ she says as her skeletal frame glides towards her desk. Her blond hair is tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. She no longer seems to be speaking to us. A soliloquy to the walls, covered in our art, our various projects: ‘Such use of the word slights the trauma of every victim of the Second World War. In particular, the suffering of the Jews who died and of their families who survived.’ She pauses, and again, now almost as if in contemplation to herself, continues: ‘South Africa is not systematically murdering people as Hitler and Mussolini did while the othercountries of Europe were expelling their own Jews to be sent to Hitlers ovens. Other things may be wrong here, indeed they are. Severely wrong.’ Her gaze shifts from the back walls, to her desk, then runs across us. Again she pauses, stares from the window into the sun up the embankment. In profile it is clear how thin she has grown: the side of the face shown to us is sunken, the chin angular and jutting. ‘So much of what’s happening in this country is wrong and cruel.’ She now places her satchel and basket on her desk, turns to look at the class, then at Dominic: ‘You will not use the words fascist or Nazi in my class when you talk about what’s going on in South Africa. Not unless you use them with enormous circumspection. What is happening here is hardly different from what happened under European colonialism in the rest of Africa, the East and the Americas. And time will show that as bad as this system is, it does not rank with the major crimes of world history, let alone of this century. You may want to take a look at Uganda. Or Biafra. At the Defiquane. Stalin’s pogroms. The conquest of America. And even then, you may want to use words like authoritarian, autocratic, despotic. Yes, racist. Not Nazi, not fascist.’Then, with the timbre of an exhausted voice, she says: ‘It’s good to see you all again. Good morning, boys�
�
‘Morning, Ma’am.’
‘I’d like to thank you all for singing at Graham’s funeral. It meant more to me and my family than words can ever say.’ No note of selfpity or pain in her deadpan voice. If behind the composure there lies fragility — as there must — she hides it by walking up and down the aisles, handing out our essays, apologising that she’s taken so long to get them back to us, asking whether Mr Loveday did a good job and whether we behaved ourselves. I smell her as she glides past me: talcum powder and a faint trace of perfume.
From my reports A in English I know I must have done well with ‘His Name Was Henk Willemse’. Smiling a nod, she hands me my book. 19/20. While she tells us to get out our Natural Science textbooks, I skim through her lengthy commentary, excitement like bubbles in my blood:
Karl, I always look forward to reading your essays and once again your rich writing has filled me with consummate joy. And also a little regret at my own lost dreams of being a novelist. This is your first essay without a single spelling error or a split infinitive! You have come so far this year that I’m want to say you’re even more talented (and infinitely more disciplined!) than I thought atfirst. Having said that: I am not sure what to make of your use of a Bosmanesque voice: remember you must develop your own artistic signature. As an exercise (such as those we’ve occasionally done in Art), emulating the elements of style of another’s work is very effective. Just he cautious that you do not stifle your individual development and creativity in the process. Find your own voice. Now is the time. It’s time for you to fly the roost! I quote here for you from an essay by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It is from the foreword to Hunger, the exquisite novel by Knut Hamsun, something you may want to read: ‘Writers who are truly original do not set out to fabricate new forms of expression, or to invent themes merely for the sake of appearing new. They attain their originality through extraordinary sincerity, by daring to give everything of themselves, their most secret thoughts and idiosyncrasies.’ Dare to be sincere in your writing Karl.
