Embrace

by Mark Behr

  The same man who earlier made the announcement about not clapping between movements, now walks onto stage. Behind him the choir is smiling. After a minute of him, helplessly holding up his hands, quiet at last comes over the hall. Coughing. Laughter.

  ‘Ladies and Gentleman, the Honourable Prime Minister, our television time is up and both choirs are exhausted after a splendid recital. I think we must now allow them to rest.’ Applause. And a boy can only take so much,’ he points to Dominic. Again the audience daps. Once order has returned he dears his throat and says: ‘May I now ask you to stand for the singing of the national anthem. For those of you who don’t know the text in both official languages, please make use of your programmes, so that you can follow the words. We’ll sing half in Afrikaans and half in English.’

  Jacques walks to the podium as the audience rises. He raises his arms. The orchestra plays the opening bars. Karl casts a glance at Prime Minister Vorster. As the voices are about to begin Jacques turns and faces the audience. Beside Karl is Bok’s strong baritone, and Alette takes the alto score from the choir. Choir and audience, together:

  Uit die hlou van onse hemel uit die diepte van ons see

  oor ons ewige gebergtes waar die kranse antwoord gee

  oor ons ver verlate vlaktes met die kreun van ossewa

  Calls the spirit of our Country; of the land that gave us birth.

  At thy call we shall not falter, firm and steadfast we shall stand,

  At thy will to live or perish, oh South Africa, dear land.

  In the Prime Minster’s box, in the cavern of the hall, above every seat, lips open and close. When the song ends, hands move from the sides where they have been at attention. On stage, Dominic’s lips are the only ones that have remained shut, whose arms throughout have been locked behind his back, as if standing at ease.

  ‘Five minutes,’ Bok tells Karl and Lukas in the foyer. ‘You have five minutes and we’ll meet you in the Royal parking lot. Lukas, if you want to be on that plane you better run.’ With that the boys scurry through the excited crowds to the backstage area.

  ‘Ooops,’ a woman’s voice behind Karl, ‘watch where you’re going, you handsome thing.’

  ‘Sorry, Miss,’ and they weave their way through the ushers who allow them to pass.

  His mind is racing. Already there’s a knot in his throat. No time to say goodbye to anyone properly! Dominic, where are you?

  ‘There’s Bennie,’ Lukas says. ‘I’ll meet you back here in three minutes, okay?’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to find Dominic. Can you see Ma’am anywhere?’ Then Dominic is beside him, laughing, asking what he thought of the broken note.

  ‘Dom, it was still beautiful. The audience loved it.’

  ‘Cilliers wasn’t pissed off, he’s in a great mood. Said everything was perfect.’

  Karl looks at Dominic. The noise and laughter of boys and adult choir members are blocked from his ears. He sees only Dominic; knows there is nothing left to say. ‘I must go, Dom.’

  Are you taking Lukas to the airport?’

  Karl nods; not trusting his voice.

  ‘Will you write?’

  ‘You must send me your address in Canada.’

  ‘I will, I promise. Will you write?’

  ‘Yes. I promise. Dom, I must go now, Lukas will miss his plane.’‘I love you, Karl.’ Karl’s eyes now come alive and he looks around to see whether anyone has heard.

  ‘Loelovise yokou titoo, Didomimineeicoc.’

  ‘No! Say it to me in English. This once, Karl. All the way.’ But before the boy can think to respond, Ma’am is at his side.

  ‘So, you made it, Karl.’ Smiling. ‘Dominic, you were superb.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma’am. Karl and Lukas have to go.’ Dominic turns to call Lukas. From where he’s talking to Bennie and Radys he signals he needs a minute.

  ‘Well, my boy. This is it, then. You’re off into the big world.’

  Karl smiles, unsure of what he is expected to say: ‘Thank you for everything, Ma’am. You have meant a great deal to me and I won’t ever forget it.’

  ‘You must keep writing, Karl. That’s your passion and very few people discover their passions as young as you and Dominic.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma’am.’

  ‘Well, off you go. I’m sure I’ll hear from my sister how you’re doing. You must make use of her, Karl, she’s a very special teacher, you know.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma’am.’ She stoops to kiss him, her hands briefly on his shoulders. He feels her eyes on him, takes in her scent, even as he looks at Dominic and they glance at each other.

  He extends his hand and Dominic his. Palms meet, fingers touch. Against his palm, Karl feels the light tickling of a forefinger and Dominic smiles and looking away from Karl to Ma’am while holding onto the hand, says: ‘There will be much more of this when I see you in Canada. I promise.’

  ‘Bye, Dom.’ He withdraws his hand.

  ‘Bye, Ma’am.’

  He turns to wave at Lukas to make a move on. He is drained and terrified. As he shakes his finger at Lukas to come at once, he hears Ma’am behind him speak to Dominic: ‘What a highlight for Mr Cilliers to end his time at the school.’

  ‘Is he leaving, Ma’am? He didn’t say anything to us.’ Dominic’s voice.

  ‘Well yes, it’s sort of an open secret amongst the staff. He’s going to lecture at—’ And Karl doesn’t hear the rest as Lukas arrives and shouts a quick goodbye to Ma’am and Dominic. He tugs at Karl’s arm. They’re moving and Karl tries to resist Lukas’s pull.

  ‘Have you said goodbye to Mr Cilliers?’ He asks over the throng.

  ‘There isn’t time. Come.’

  ‘No, I want to speak to him. I must say goodbye to him.’

  ‘Come on, Karl, I’m going to miss the plane.’

  ‘No, I want to see Mr Cilliers.’

  ‘Karl!’ Lukas almost shouts. ‘We must go and you know you’re not allowed near . . .’ Karl swings back, turns his gaze on Lukas. Lukas adds: ‘Because I’m going to miss my plane!’

  And then they run, through parents and well-wishers, Karl waving at Bennie and Mervyn and other classmates. And all the time Karl is thinking, they fired him, Mathison fired him. They chased him away. Mervyn has now caught up. While they say a few words that Karl will for ever be unable to recall, he sees the back of Jacques’s head as it moves into the men’s toilet. Without a word to Lukas or Mervyn he slips to the door that has now swung shut. Jacques is standing at the urinal, his back to the door. Karl stands leaning against the door. Wondering where to start.

  ‘Mr Cilliers . . .’ Karl waits, but the man at the urinal does not turn; doesn’t even acknowledge the boy behind him.

  Still Karl continues: ‘He . .. Mathison promised they wouldn’t do anything to you. I swear I didn’t mean...’ He pauses, suddenly terrified that the man peeing is not the man in the evening suit he is looking for. There are hundreds of black-suited men here. It must be him. ‘Where are you going, Jacques? Ma’am said you were.. .’The toilet door swings open and Lukas grabs Karl by the sleeve. They’re out of the door, running, bumping into shoulders, heading for the foyer and the door.

  *

  ‘There’s the statue of John Ross,’ Karl says to Lukas as they turn right at the harbour. The Chevrolet leaves the black palms of Durban’s esplanade. Bok races up the on ramp that takes them onto the N2 south.

  ‘Were never going to make this flight,’ Bokkie says with a nervous edge to her voice. ‘But there’s no need to drive like you’re practising for Kayalami, Bok.’ And the boys laugh.

  ‘We’ll make it, Bokkie, calm down. Lukas, if you miss the flight you can stay the night and we’ll get you on another plane in the morning.’

  ‘My parents would have left the farm already, Uncle Ralph. It’s a two-hour drive to East London.’

  ‘We’ll make it. Just hold on tight.’

  The car flies and the two boys lean forward to see the speedometer reach one hundred and fifty
kilometres per hour. While there are frequent silences, each occasionally comments on the concert. About Vorster who looked tired and Bok says it’s because it’s been a tough year for the old man. There is unrest in all the black locations. From the Transvaal it has spilt out into the entire country. Lukas says it sounded to him as though Dominic’s voice was going and Bokkie says she has never heard a voice like that. Bok agrees and they all opine on what will become of Dominic’s voice when it changes.

  ‘You never know,’ Karl says. ‘There may be nothing left after it’s broken.’

  ‘Okay. When we get there,’ Bok says, ‘I’m going to drive to the No Parking area and you two just grab the suitcases and run. If were lucky the flight might be delayed. Bokkie and I will park and then come and say goodbye, Lukas. Okay?’

  ‘That’s fine, Oom Ralph.’

  At Louis Botha’s domestic departures Bok pulls onto a yellow line fifteen minutes before the plane is due to leave. Lukas grabs his huge suitcase from the boot. With Karl beside him carrying two loose sportsbags, they rush into the almost deserted terminal. Theylook around for the check-in counter and make a dash to where a stewardess is signalling to them. The counter is about to close. The attendant makes a hasty phone call. While talking into the receiver she motions for a black man to drag the bags onto the conveyor belt. Replacing the receiver she says that Lukas can make it if he runs. The boys have barely turned from the check-in counter when a female voice over the intercom calls: Passenger Van Rensburg holding up flight SAA 349 to East London, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, please proceed through Gate 4 immediately. They run. At the gate have but a moment to shake hands. As Lukas is about to be hurried through by the waiting air hostess, he turns back to Karl.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  And Karl lifts his shoulders and smiles a frown. ‘What for?’

  And Lukas, already moving off, says: ‘Didn’t you know about Cilliers and Almeida?’ And he stops.

  Either Karl has not heard right or his brain does not want to accept the lingering words that have come from his friend’s mouth. ‘What do you mean, Lukas?’ he asks softly, not sure that any sound actually leaves his throat.

  ‘I wanted to help you,’ Lukas says, again starting to move.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Karl asks, now registering his own voice speaking, even as he does not want to be asking the question; as he feels his head grow light, like it wants to take flight rather than hear what it has known all along and has been unable to deal with or acknowledge.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lukas says, turning to go.

  For a fraction of a second Karl thinks of letting it be, but suddenly it is all too much to leave unspoken, at once he feels he must know: ‘Tell me!’ He almost cries out and takes a few paces after Lukas, who turns, comes to a standstill.

  ‘Almeida told me in Malawi. About Juffrou Roos . . . and about him and Cilliers. I knew he wasn’t coming back . . .’ He begins to walk away. ‘Bye, Karl. Say thanks and goodbye to your folks . . .’

  ‘Lukas!’ Karl calls but the boy in the black blazer has disappeared through the gates.

  Gone.

  Karl turns back into the all but empty terminal. Huge and white like a hospital ward. This is where Bernice will be working next year. For a mere moment he considers pondering what Lukas said. He swallows, blinks. Tells himself to forget it. No, that’s not what he meant. No. Not Lukas. Not Steven, he tells himself. I heard wrong. And he promises to not think of it again. At the door he sees the hurried figures of his mother and father enter the departures hall. Bokkie gestures with incredulity when she sees him alone.

  ‘He just made it. He said to say goodbye to you.’

  ‘Well, at least we made it. Let’s go.’

  And the three of them exit the terminal into the sounds of an approaching helicopter. Sweeping in from the location of Kwamakhuta, the camouflaged crafts blinding lights drop groundward, sweeping to and fro. As the family pass onto the parking lot the massive rhythms and sudden blows of great blades beating are above and around them. Bokkie crouches down beneath the battering, her hands clasped over her ears. Bok contorts his face and draws both his wife and son to him. The shudders of churning air take hold of them and Karl can feel the wind like webs in his neck as he and his parents come to a compete standstill. The gusts and lights are a white rush and his heart beats strangely into the rhythm of the terrifying blades, like brute power that simultaneously pushes and pulls. He feels his body want to rise upward, as though the machine is a magnet caressing his tightening skin exactly where it lies against his flesh.

  Leaving the airport on the Isipingo flats, the Chevrolet speeds along the South Coast highway and turns up the hill towards Umbogentwini and heads for Toti. The cabin is a world of a thousand unspoken thoughts. Bokkie reminds Bok that the dog Judy has to be spayed before she goes to her new owners. Karl thinks of the Clemence-Gordons, that he didn’t say goodbye to them. Did not thank them for the photos. What did Mervy say backstage? He notes seconds flash by as the headlights touch the staggered white line dividing the road in two. He sees himself tomorrow: I will burn that photograph of us with Almeida; no, first tear it up into shreds and then burn it. No, all of them! No use keeping them: the one Bok took on the day I arrived, with me and Bokkie standing in the parking lot with Cathkin Peak and Champagne Castle behind us in the blue; with Ma’am and the Olvers at Monkey Bay; the one of us in class laughing at Bennie doing a Cassius Clay match on the desk; the three formal choir shots of us in full blue and white concert dress with Mr Selbourne, Mr Roelofse and Jacques — that’s the only one I have of him, maybe I could keep just that — no, no, everything or nothing; Dominic and Mervy in front of the SABC building in Auckland Park; Lukas, me and Dominic on the Bree River Bridge; all those with me and Rufus, maybe just one, of the horse, I can keep just one; our fort in spring when the poplar was budding. Yes, tear and burn in the back yard. Before we say goodbye to Judy and pack up and move to the flat in Durban. A thought catches him off guard and he asks, without thinking, whether they have heard anything recently about Uncle Klaas.

  ‘In Klerksdorp, apparendy. Arrived there a few weeks ago and is sleeping in Aunt Barbaras servants’ quarters. Strong as a horse, unwashed, as disgusting as ever,’ Bokkie says.

  Again the car is hulled in silence. Bokkie says they’re leaving the Dutch Reformed Church. ‘For too long we’ve been slaves to Afrikaner narrowness and hypocrisy! Dressing up and sitting there like dummies. Were going to the Presbyterian Church the moment we set roots in Durban.’ She says that he and Lena will have to share a room in the Durban flat. The flat has only two bedrooms and costs three hundred and fifty a month.

  And I will go back, he tells himself, to Dr Taylor, yes, yes, Dr Taylor will give me direction. Look up his number in the phonebook, won’t be in the Toti book, call inquiries 1003, Dr Taylor. A new programme of action. POA. I’ll get the money, somehow, ask Aunt Lena. Or Ouma De Man! Yes, she adores me and she’s marrying money. Surely she can get money from Mr Shaw? But that might take a bit of time. He’ll get Mr Shaw to like him. In the meantime there’s Aunt Lena.

  Are the Mackenzies coming for Christmas?’

  ‘Did you know that Uncle Joe’s Matilda is in the other time?’ Bokkie asks from the front seat.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Four months.’ Silence again as Bok takes the off ramp and crosses the highway bridge. Karl’s eyes are on the dark stream of the highway below. Soon the bird sanctuary will be on their right.

  ‘Why didn’t she go to London to have an abortion?’ he asks.

  A brief silence before Bokkie answers: ‘Why would she? She and that poor white family of hers can milk Joe Mackenzie for maintenance for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘What does Aunt Lena say?’

  ‘Cries a lot. The whole town knows, of course. But she still believes Uncle Joe will change. Begged the Lord to give her guidance about a week ago and that night she had a dream of Saul riding to Damascus on the donkey. Now she believes th
e Lord has spoken and told her to stay. So she’s staying, for God and those children. Phones here every two or three days in tears. Like she has for all these years.’

  ‘’n Jakkals is ’n jakkals,’ Bok says, flicking his cigarette butt from the window.

  ‘Won’t surprise me if she goes mad again. I know her when she’s like this. Starts getting visions of angels and Jesus on the cross. I tell you, before Matilda gives birth Lena will be in Tara again having shock treatments. It’s the only way to let her forget.’

  As they slow down to turn into Bowen Street, Karl’s mind speeds. He is driven to make — before they turn in at that gate and park beneath that Natal mahogany — a chain of what he swears areunbreakable resolutions: henceforth I will be an honourable, disciplined and upright young man. No more boisterousness, no more things with other boys, no, it is all over, no thoughts of the mad gene, or any of this stuff. I will begin by no longer thinking of myself as a boy; boyhood will be left behind like a single unbroken dreadful memory. To make forgetting easier, I will no longer flounder around in the memories of the bush either, for letting go means severing all ties, definitively. It is all over and gone. With the photographs. I will be turning fifteen next year, he tells himself. It is a time for new beginnings. Taking the future into my own hands: eyes on nothing but the target. So yes, there may be high-school guys waiting for him at the gates as Lena had said she’d ensure, but he will eat their initial wrath with good cheer and then he’ll win them over: initially by doing everything they tell him, by not using his hands, by trying to use as few words as possible with s and t sounds, by not folding his legs at the knee, keeping his handwriting slanted and desisting from twirling the e’s. I’ll try to stop biting my nails for that only adds to the appearance of nervousness. I will exude confidence without giving lip to anyone. I will learn to laugh scornfully or to feign indifference. Indifference, indifference, indifference: my motto, my salvation. There is, he knows, the problem that everyone knows he can sing — and Ma’am said her sister will be a mentor for his writing. But that I will evade, yes, I will, he thinks, I will not go near Miss Hope, for to become the teacher’s pet or to let anyone know I want to be a writer will again undermine the entire programme of action. Just stop it, forget about being a writer, what a stupid idea anyway. Or do it in secret. Yes, writing can be done without anyone knowing. I can do it in secret. Practise with the weights again. I will simply stick to the story that my voice is breaking and after it indeed has, I will say there is no voice left. I will continue swimming, and after swimming season I will for the life of me play rugby. I won’t fake injury or illness as so often in the past: I’ll become a team player: loyal to the bitter end, not letting down the side. There will be cadets at school! Yes, the militarymarching will, as surely as my name is Karl De Man, teach me to walk without the swagger that Dominic said his mother called androgynous. And if anyone uses that word in my direction or simply in my presence or any of its synonyms or associative nouns, I’ll smile in mock amusement and then let it go, will not remember it beyond the moment of its articulation. And Dominic can write till he’s blue in the face; I won’t read a word of his evil. I’ll practise with my weights. I’ll be strong. I’ll have occasional fights, even if I can’t stand the thought. I will deliberately pick a fight, maybe with someone I suspect a hint weaker than myself. And I will control this tongue: no wisecracks, no slinging of verbal abuse at enemies, I will become friends with the roughest, strongest boys. Go to school movies with Alette. No, I must break up with Alette. To arrive there with an older girlfriend spells trouble. Lena’s right. Find another girlfriend, I’m good-looking, smart and charming. I’ll find one. I will be loved and admired. I will go to the army to serve this country and get the Pro Patria. Hopefully be injured. Not killed. Please not killed. Wounded and awarded the Honorus Crux for bravery. This country, each and every person who lives here, will be proud of me. I will become exactly what they all want me to be, and more! I will be their man, whatever it costs. But if I die, let me be killed by the enemy, and not in training at the hands of my own people. Then on to university to become a lawyer. With a beautiful wife and two children and I’ll buy a house maybe in Cape Town or Muizenberg and I’ll go to the beach with my children and my wife and I’ll be a success. I will be kind, generous and successful. I will take care of the woman I marry and the bright, beautiful children we beget. I will not end up like Uncle Joe. Or Bok. Uncle Klaas! Never. I will be powerful and wealthy. But in an honest, respectable way. No, I don’t want wealth, no, just respectability, to be part of the decent people, the bourgeoisie of this country. Not rich but not poor. And I will try to be quiet, to keep this loud mouth and laughter muted, to not speak, not speak about anything. If I want to keep a secret I’ll think it in Gogga — no — toomany others can understand that. I’ll find a hew secret language, create my own new alphabet. No! No secrets, I will have no secrets any more. Transparent as the skin of a gecko. What you see is what there is, that’s me. And I will succeed at everything I do. I will be a phenomenal success. I will be silent and no one will know or suspect anything about the other things I was or may have been or might have become. Only I can decide whether it will have occurred. If I don’t say a thing, it doesn’t exist. If I don’t tell the story, it never happened. What is the past other than the story we choose to tell! It’s in my hands. Everything.