by Mark Behr
‘Beauty,’ I begin, immediately aware that I’m speaking to her for the first time since the abortive apology behind the kitchen, ‘have you seen Dom anywhere?’
Instead of answering, she turns her back, continues folding socks and sorting them into dorms. Each sock marked at the toe. She reads the name, throws it on the relevant pile.
‘Beauty, I don’t see why you still have to be angry. I’m not angry at you any more.’
She casts me a glance and shakes hear head.
‘Okay, Beauty! So I’m sorry about the incident with the blanket.’ Still she doesn’t respond.
‘And for the library,’ I say.
She remains silent, occupied in her job.
‘For what I said in the library.’
At this she straightens her back, drops a bundle of socks and looks at me. She folds her arms across her breasts. ‘What did you say in the library?’ She seems to taunt me, defiance or a challenge in her tone.
‘I won’t ever say it again.’
She glares at me. Wordless. Waiting.
‘I told you to shut up . . . Beauty, I’m sorry, I should—’
‘Go and fuck yourself, black bitch . . . or I’ll report to Mrs Booysen!’ she says. Stands, looking me in the eye.
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean it. I was just so afraid, Beauty. I’m sorry, really.’
‘He was in here a while ago. He’s very sad and he’s gone to the river.’ ‘Did he say anything, Beauty? About phoning his father because of what happened in class?’
‘Madam Sanders has to say she’s sorry. Or else Dr Webster is coming to fetch Dom.’ My heart sinks. I ask how long ago Dominic left and she says about fifteen minutes.
‘Thank you, Beaut. And, Beauty . . . I won’t ever speak to anyone like that again. I promise.’ She nods her head and goes back to folding. ‘I promise. Don’t you believe me?’
‘We’ll see,’ she says.
There is nothing I can do to make it right. Nothing I can say. I run down the corridor, through the library and past the music rooms and the sound of pianos, violins and flutes. Tears sting my eyes. Dominic, Dominic, no, you mustn’t leave, please, please don’t leave. I’ll speak to Jacques! Yes! Yes! Yes! He won’t let you go. Don’t go. Please don’t leave me here alone.
*
I find him at the fort. Facing the river. Cheeks red and swollen. He says his parents are coming to collect him tomorrow unless Ma’am offers him an unqualified apology. His father has congratulated him on telling her off. He will not be going to choir tonight. His father has said for him to start packing unless he hears from Mathison and Ma’am by prep. Dr Webster has spoken to Mathison and given the school an ultimatum.
We crawl to the rear of the fort. I lean with my back against the dump of roots, looking around for traces of them. Their smell is here; they must be down at the drif. Dom sits in front of me, leaning against my stomach, our hands intertwined on my knees. Ma’am’s words come to haunt me. The loathing in her eyes as she spoke: ‘I cannot stand geminate boys! Like a white-hot branding iron through my body, into my soul. Yet, she is the one who is my mentor. She is the one who is turning me into a writer. I am rattled, I have no idea what to think or do. I am suddenly afraid of being seen with Dominic. And Dominic: ‘You have a prference for boys who play with guns! I have no idea where he gets the courage from. How could he even imagine standing up to Ma’am? And to Mathison! Refusing to be caned? I ask whether he thinks Ma’am will apologise. He says he doubts it and in a way hopes she doesn’t. He’s tired of this place anyway. What about finishing Standard Six, I ask, it’s so close to the end of the year. And what about the Mass! What about the soprano solos? The Grade Eight exam?
‘There are ways to let me play my exams. And any of the private schools in Jo’burg will take me. As for the Mass: let Johan Rademan squeak it out,’ he says, giggling and turning to lay his face against my chest. ‘You’ll still love me, Karl, won’t you? Even when I’m gone?’
‘I always will,’ I say. ‘I can’t see that Ma’am will apologise. It would set a precedent, Dom.’
‘It’s not that, Karl. This fucken system is too strong to collapse from one apology. But you all, all of you, should have refused to be punished. By allowing yourselves to be caned, let alone caned for Sanders’s spitefulness, you’re all making the system function exactly as it’s meant to.’
‘That’s what I’m saying: if she apologises it opens the floodgates for us all to refuse to do as they say.’
‘That’s not why she won’t apologise, Karl, listen to me! This place can’t apologise because it doesn’t even know that it’s wrong to speak to anyone like she spoke to me. They’re all equally blind to their stupidity. They all believe their own lies. God I loathe this place. I’m starting to hope we go and live in Canada.’ I hear the river. Finches or weavers somewhere in the poplars above our roof. I am heartbroken. ‘She knows nothing,’ he continues. ‘Nothing, she knows nothing about Gounod, the fucken queer who wrote the music I had to perform at her son’s fascist funeral. Like half the shit we sing here! Composed by the effeminate men she can’t stand. Like half the fucken books she throws at you to read, Karl! Written by the effeminate men she can’t stand. Like half the fucken painters she purports to teach us, painted by the fucken effeminate—’
‘Stop, Dom, please stop,’ I say, my voice breaking. ‘I don’t want you to leave,’ I whisper. And suddenly I’m the one crying.
We walk back up the hill together.
He goes to the dorm.
I go to choir.
Rademan joins the quartet. I open my mouth but cannot sing. I must go and speak to Jacques. Tell him to intervene on Dom’s behalf. But when choir breaks up he’s gone before I can get to him. A staff meeting has been called. I’ll go tonight. Whether he wants me there or not, I’ll go and speak to him, demand that he do something. I’ll threaten him.
At supper the dining hall is abuzz, Juniors, Secondaries and Seniors. Dom is nowhere. Everyone is outraged at Webster’s conceit. The whole school is against him. Rademan is an instant hero. If only I could go to Jacques. If only I could be with Dominic. He is not in prep. Is he in the dorm? At the staff meeting? With Mathison? Is Ma’am there? When I hear the Juniors troop up for showers, I ask the prefect onduty for permission to go to the toilet. Instead I sneak to G Dorm. Uncle Charlie is at the Junior bathrooms, supervising showers. Already from the door I see Dominic bent over a suitcase. This is not happening. No. I go to him and sit down on his bed. He smiles. Goes on throwing things into the case. He says he hasn’t heard anything from Mathison, so he’s called his parents again. They’ve told him to pack. I say Rademan is awful on the high notes. He says he heard, and smiles, let them hear if they cannot feel. Let Ludwig turn in his mausoleum.
, I ask whether I can come to him tonight. He asks whether I’ve lost my mind.
‘Please don’t leave in the morning without coming to say goodbye.’ And as I speak I again begin to cry. He steps away from his suitcase. He’s biting his lip, eyes flooding. He hugs me. We both weep. He sobs against my chest. My face is pressed into his neck.
In bed I want only to go to Dom. Ma’am’s words. Try to block them; erase them; excise them from memory. They were never spoken, not by you, Ma’am. Madam. That’s Adam with an M at the front. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I wish it were you who died and not Graham. If only you had died in a car crash none of this would have happened. You have destroyed my life. With one sentence changed my destiny.
Dom wasn’t in the showers. Radys saying they could give Dom shit all night; make his last night here hell. And Uncle Charlie, for once his ears open rather than his eyes on every set of loins: ‘If I hear a sound from G tonight, if I hear one whisper against Webster, you boys will not sit for a month.’ I weep into my pillow, terrified at being left here without him. I must go and speak to Jacques. He must make sure Dom stays or I’ll threaten to tell about us.
My hand trembles as I knock. Bach from his room. He is not there. Relief
Bastard. Bastard. Where are you when I need you? Down there at that bitch’s cottage. I go back to bed. Want to go to Dom. Should I? What if were caught; tonight of all nights? What’s going on in G?
Uncle Klaas. He’ll make me feel better. No use lying in this bedunable to sleep. I will not sleep tonight. I’ll keep coming to Jacques’s room until he gets back. I will watch the sun rise. Be there for Dom when he leaves.
Deposit the slippers outside the music-room window. There’s a light on in Mathison’s office and for an instant I want to turn back. Decide against it. I am thinking how I would like to run away from here. If Dominic leaves, if Jacques doesn’t do something, I’m running away. I’ll ask Uncle Klaas what he thinks. The night is warm, almost hot, and though there is no moon the stars light the sky.
I wake them. Tonight they come outside. We light a fire on the riverbank. On the other side the white flowers have opened. Stars against the rocks. Their scent a bridge across the river.
‘So, you’re still here, Uncle Klaas?’
‘You’ll know when I’m gone.’
I tell him that the European tour has been cancelled. He shows no interest.
He asks how everyone is at home. I say fine, though were moving into a flat and selling off the house and Bok is going into insurance. ‘Insurance against what?’ he asks, laughing from his belly.
The Silent One has rolled a zol.
I tell Uncle Klaas that I’d like to run away, from school and from home, just like he did. Even to my own ears the notion sounds childish. Preposterous.
‘I’m not running anywhere. Haven’t ever.’ He says. I don’t say I know better. That I know the story of how he ran away because his girlfriend rejected him. Instead I explain that I don’t want to stay here anymore, nor do I want to go home. I know I have to, but I don’t want to. I don’t say anything about Dominic.
He laughs and says I can never run away. I must stay and face my demons.
‘What demons?’ I ask, irritated at his lack of understanding, empathy.
‘At home and here,’ he says.
‘I have no demons. I want to live like Coen and Mandy, on a yacht or in the bush. Away from everything.’
‘Why don’t you want to go home?’ he asks.
> ‘I am not the son they wanted,’ I say, quietly. Again I want to weep.
‘ ‘ Are they the parents you wanted?’
I shake my head, but cannot answer. No, they are not what I would have wanted. I am so grateful for his question. Yes, I am not what they want, but they are not what I want. The knife cuts both ways. But how, how does that help me? What comfort does knowing that bring? tfeHe passes me the zol. I drag, deeply, hold it in my lungs.
‘How uncourageous you are, Karl. After all. Not quite a coward, but how uncourageous. How like all the rest — in spite of the boisterousness. I thought for a moment you would be different.’
‘But I don’t want to be different,’ I say, my voice beginning to crack. ‘Precisely. I want only to be the same as everyone around me. I want to blend and not be seen.’ I don’t want to be despised, I want to cry to him, for being effeminate. With the smell of zol, I take in the sweetness from the other side of the river. The beautiful white flowers, reaching me through the walms of smoke.
You cannot be ordinary until you know how different you are. You cannot be different till you know how ordinary.’ Stop it, I want to cry, you are full of contradictions. One moment you’re kind to me and the next you’re so spiteful. Just like Ma’am. You are making me mad. You want me to go mad like you and Aunt Lena.
I stand up and undress. I swim across. Cannot reach high enough to the flowers. In the night I slip from the rocks and fall back into the water. Stronger since a month ago. It has rained. The boulders are too steep. Swim back. Water is lovely. Back at the fort. Put on pyjama shorts. He has lit another zol. Again I drag, in silence. Now my head is spinning.
You should be happy.’
I can tell he’s being sarcastic. Still I respond as if he may be serious: ‘Then why am I so unhappy? I feel as though I have nothing or no one.’ I want to say that no one loves me. That Dominic, whom I love, is leaving. And Jacques . . . I must go, I must go and speak to Jacques.
‘It is because you wish not to know who you are. And I cannot teach you that. You must make that journey yourself. And yours, I can tell, is going to be a long voyage with an inordinate cargo. The cargo of those who try to swim against the tides of themselves. Against yourself, you, like this country, will have to drown.’
You are meant to be helping me! Stare at the Silent One; you just sit there too. Help me. Stand; remove pyjama shorts. Dive back into the water. I come up the riverbank and stand naked by the fire to get dry.
‘We have nothing to pack up,’ he says. ‘Everything of importance is here,’ he points to his stomach and to his head. ‘Nothing to carry, nothing to drop. Nothing to win, nothing to lose. But for those like you . . . those who deceive themselves as deeply as you choose to deceive yourself, there will first have to be loss and recognition. For you will allow your every weakness to be exploited, and more, your wilfulness will force you to go in search of those whom will do you greatest harm, from whose feasts you will rise, bloated, to do your own. To try and obliterate what you could have loved most.’
I spread my dressing gown and sit down by the fire. Naked.
He leans over for the bag of Boxer next to me and I smell him, his ghastly breath, the bitter sweat. In the firelight I see the fingernails, black and dreadful. I hate him.
In an attempt to hurt, to assert some power over him, I ask: ‘If you are so free, why did you run away from home when you were young?’
‘I never ran from home. I will never run.’
‘You ran away, don’t you remember? After your girlfriend left you for another man?’ He throws his, head back and laughs. Mad, like a hyena in the night. Passes me the zol.
‘So! That’s the story, is it?’
‘Everyone knows, Uncle Klaas. Have you forgotten?’ I drag, hold it in, cough. Pass to Mr Silent King.
, ‘I never ran, they chased me.’ He says. Without a whim of either sadness or self-pity. Instead he smiles at me, his teeth and tongue shining in the firelight. I feel afraid, shake, as if catching a cold. Again I shiver.
‘What happened, Uncle Klaas?’
He takes the zol from the Silent One, inhales, holds it in his lungs and passes the hot stub to me.
‘Great-Grandfather Liebenberg, and Great-Grandmother — let us not forget her — they chased me out. For loving.’
‘What do you mean, they chased you for loving?’ Flick the butt into the river. Tss.
‘For not loving a girl.’ i’But you said it was for loving?’ Suddenly the story, the one I have grown up with, is unravelling. My heart beats in my mouth. I now want him to stop. I do not want to hear the rest. He leans over to the Silent One and rests his hand briefly on the man’s exposed ankle. Then he leans towards me and runs his hand up my arm.
, ‘In some ways you and I, Karl’tjie, are alike. You — I.’The pronouns connected by a dash. ‘Do you understand?’
It is ghastly, I do not want this. Or to even know this. He smells like a cesspool, sour, of piss. I shudder and start putting on my shirt. Rise to slip on my pyjama pants, turn from him. Stumble. This is what will happen to me. This is how I will become. Dressing gown. This is what I will be. As Bok says: a white man who cannot make it in this country is not worth being called white. Out of here, away. I walk to the edge of the river, leaving them by the fire. Suddenly I feel a wave of anger, raw hatred for him. I imagine him coming up behind me so I can push him in. Let him drown, drown, drown.
‘I have already drowned...’ his voice like thunder reaches me. I fly around and stare at him, tighten the dressing gown’s belt around my waist. He is reading my thoughts. As if he is sitting in my brain. Iwant to weep, when I see his face, white and righteous in the firelight. He looks like the devil. Satan. And his disciple. My eyes glance
at the Silent One. Bible says nothing about peppercorns. I am terrified.
‘Some can live without first feeling the water in their lungs, but others need to go down. We,’ he casts his eyes to the Silent One, ‘will not drown, for we already have. You still want to walk on the water. Until you’ve gone down as deep as you ever will to a place where you will face yourself in all your naked horror, you, who fear so much, yours will be a story about the failure of love.’ The voice, like an animal growling, must be the voice of Satan.
‘There once was an old blind shaman,’ he continues, ‘the sage of the clan. Everyone came to it for advice. Up there,’ he points, ‘just below those overhangs. About their children and babies, about disease, about the weather, about their dreams. One day, a group of children came to it and stood in front of it with a bird in their hands. They asked the old shaman: tell us, if you are so wise, is this bird we hold in our hands alive—’
I do not need to hear more! Dr Taylor! It’s the story Dr Taylor told me! I will not listen, he’s the Devil, he knows everything about me, I will not, do not want this. ‘Stop it, Uncle Klaas. Stop it.’ I scream, dizzy, as if I’m about to faint.
I turn and run. From behind me he calls: ‘It’s in your hands, whether it’s alive or dead, it’s in your hands!’ I run downstream, now sobbing, terrified of the night, terrified of every shadow. I will not be like this, I will not be chased from my house and turn into a tramp. I will look after myself, I will take care of myself, I will get out of it all, I will not be what he is. How dare he, how dare he do this to me?
I run through the fort village. I am lost, look for the school’s silhouette against the hill. When did I cross the river? I have crossed, no, only imagined that I have crossed the stream, but find myself still on the school side, then along the road, my feet in the dust, and the clouds heavy, like it will rain, the sounds of the night, Bokkie’s voice, Beauty and the blanket, beast, fairy-tale, illusions, stories, Dademan,tears, crying, too much Ouma, Ma’am, Jacques, will go to no, no, no, must stop it all, not become like Satan, San Andreas, Jesus is merci-fal, sissy, pansy, music no more singing, over, love him, I love too much and Dominic, no, Uncle Klaas, hate, failure, effeminate, leave me alone, please go away, sobbing, the smell of flowers, from a garden, like a park, I’m an impala I will survive. I stumble, my hands grab at grass. Sprawl. Instinct. I get up, toe bleeding, Jesus, help me, save me, cannot go through life like this, hairclip, cut it off, Madame Guillotine, Dom, Bok must love me, be proud like Lena, Stephanie, poor Stephanie, money, no, no, don’t think, enough, enough, slow down, into orchards, pull yourself together Karl, Karl, Kal, kal, al, al, 1, 1. Mathison’s light still on. Jesus! Careful. Walk, slow down, not afraid, never been afraid of night, nothing here, no wild animals, no ghosts, walk, calm down, down, down, yes, calm down, walk, breath, deep, in, out, in out, deep breathing, clear my mind, Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, misrerere noba — nobis — Dona, nobis, pacem, yes, turn up here, go this way, summer, lovely evening, quiet, crickets, breathe, breathe, go back, yes, Karl, quietly, calmly.
