by Robyn Scott
When Sister Brunhilda, the German num who taught us RE, announced one of her spot tests, I would feel ill.
Her tests consisted of asking each girl, out loud, a single different question. For which she would award either ‘Zero’, ‘Von half’, or ‘Von’.
The questions were of wildly varying difficulty, and whether anyone passed was mostly down to luck. Or, in a few cases, how in favour they were – the only reason I generally scraped through with at least ‘Von half’.
“Ja, Hobbin,” she said, smiling warmly at me, “Vat can you tell me? Ah, yes. I have it. Vas it twelve or ten apostles?” She raised her hand abruptly to the outraged mutters of “Easy.”
“Ja! be quiet. My little ruffians.”
And despite themselves, everyone laughed. Sister Brunhilda tweaked her habit, smoothing her skirt, and gazed around the room with twinkling eyes and a superior grin. It was the same grin she wore on the regular occasions she reminded us how when she was ayoung woman in Germany, she could have been a model, but she’d instead chosen to be a nun.
“Twelve,” I said, uncertainly.
“Very good, Hobbin.”
She gave me a lingering, indulgent smile. Then her face grew stern. Shaking her head and wagging her finger, she spun around to face one of my cheekiest friends. “Ja, Tiffany McGaw,” she said. “Ze real ruffian. Ah, now you can tell me vat vas the name of the father of Joseph. And vat did he do?”
Towards the middle of the first term, Sister Brunhilda arrived in class and announced that the theme of today’s lesson would be mothers and fathers. “And ve are all going to talk about our own lovely parents,” she said. “Ja! Such important people in our lives.”
Having picked on several girls, she nodded impatiently as they each described what their parents did. Then, grinning, she turned to me.
“Now, Hobbin,” she said, “tell us all about your father. He is a doctor, no?”
“A flying doctor,” I corrected her. “But he’s sold his plane now.”
“Ja,” she said, casting her beaming gaze around the class. “But he is not just that. He is also a missionary doctor!”
“No, he’s not,” I corrected her, too surprised to think through my answer. “He charges for consultations.”
“Vot?” Sister Brunhilda looked at me, uncomprehending.
“Eighty pula now,” I explained. “The same for every patient. Cash only.”
She stared at me silently, so I continued.
“He used to do medical aid. But that didn’t really work, because patients in Botswana expect immediate results. If one doctor’s medicine doesn’t work quickly, they go straight off to another one, and keep hopping from one private doctor to the next. So the health insurance companies get sticky about paying out. My father just decided the admin was too much.”
But Sister Brunhilda wasn’t really listening.
“Hobbin,” she said slowly. “Are you saying your father takes money from all ze poor, sick people in the villages?”
Meeting her incredulous gaze, I suddenly thought of my rapid acceptance; my money-is-the-root-of-all-evil entrance essay; my mysteriously favourable treatment in RE.
I felt dizzy with panic. I was going to be expelled for misleading nuns.
“Well, yes, he does charge,” I said hastily, “but his patients could go to the free government hospitals. They choose to go to a private doctor. And anyway, many people in the villages have lots of cattle and aren’t so poor.”
Sister Brunhilda continued to look gently devastated.
“And he offers another service,” I added. “He’s a dispensing doctor. And there aren’t pharmacies in most of the villages where he has clinics. So if he didn’t go there, people would have to travel really far to get their medicines.”
Sister Brunhilda began to speak but lost her words. The class was absolutely quiet; the silence terrible.
“Also,” I spluttered, “the medicines are included in the consultation fee. Which my dad calls socialist medicine because all the hypochondriacs, who are often the wealthier patients, subsidise poor people who only visit when they’re really sick.” I fixed Sister Brunhilda with an earnest gaze. “And so my father actually loses money on the really sick poor people who need lots of medicines.”
Sister Brunhilda smiled weakly. “Ja, Hobbin. Thank you. I think now ve vill hear from somebody else.”
For weeks afterwards, when I saw a nun in the corridors I looked at the floor and skulked quickly past along the walls. When I saw Sister Angela, the headmistress, I fled. But I was not expelled. And by the end of term, when we had one of our final lessons on the theme of religious initiation rituals, Sister Brunhilda was even gracing me with the occasional smile.
“Now every one of you vill have been through zese,” she said. “All religions have them. Us Catholics. Other Christians.” She paused, and looked around the class. “And Muslims and Hindus too,” she added, looking pointedly at the handful of girls in these categories. “I am right. Yes, of course I am right. I know zese things. Has anyone not been baptised? Or done something like baptism in zer religion? No. I thought not. Now…”
Then her smile disappeared. “Ah, vat? Hobbin? No!”
Everyone turned around. I dropped my arm.
Sister Brunhilda let out a startled little cough. She stared at me wide-eyed. Then she said, “Hobbin, are you sure? For certain? Never? No!”
“Definitely,” I said. “Or my brother and sister. My mother wanted us to choose what we wanted to be when we were old enough to decide.”
“Oh, really?” Sister Brunhilda looked genuinely shocked.
“And I haven’t decided yet.”
Sister Brunhilda blinked and shook her head. Her face was full of pity. But apparently too overcome to pursue the devastating discovery, she went on with the lesson, during which she made several pointed references to purgatory.
But concerns about purgatory were dwarfed by renewed expulsion panic.
I consulted Tiffany, who’d previously assured me I would not be expelled just for not being a missionary’s daughter.
“Well, I’ve never heard of anyone being expelled for this,” she said, uncertainly. “You get expelled for drinking or smoking or getting pregnant.”
“So I’ll be okay?”
“I suppose.” She looked unconvinced. “But I’ve also never heard of anyone who wasn’t baptised getting in here. Maybe you should just quickly get done and tell her it was a mistake.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
Tiffany shrugged. “Bulawayo’s so small, she’d probably find out anyway. So dunno what you should do.” She smiled at me. “Pray, maybe?”
I did nothing and prepared to gallantly take the worst. Later that week, looking purposeful, Sister Brunhilda cornered me in the gloomy corridor.
“Hello, Sister,” I said, swallowing.
Sister Brunhilda gave me a fond smile and patted me on the arm. “Vel. Hobbin,” she said sweetly, “I have been thinking about zis baptism. Now I am quite sure zatyou are really old enough to decide now.” She paused, fixing me with her piercing blue eyes. Then she said, “And I vanted to recommend that you choose to be a Catholic. Ve have so much to offer.”
Suddenly my small but crucial power dawned on me. I looked at her earnestly. “I know, Sister,” I said.
“And it vould be so easy, Hobbin. You could go for lessons here and be baptised in ze cathedral. It’s just across the road, you know.” She gestured in the direction of the ugly brown cathedral where the school sometimes went for mass. “Beautiful place. So restful.”
“It is, Sister.”
“Vel, the sooner the better. Ve could start your lessons straight away. This week?”
“But it’s nearly exams,” I said, squirming. “You wouldn’t want me to fail.”
“Ja! No.” She looked shocked. “You vould never fail for devoting time to God! Just a few hours a week…very simple…”
Sister Brunhilda’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. I
couldn’t help liking her, even when she was trying to be a missionary.
I said, “I need more time to decide. All I really know for certain right now is that I don’t want to be a born-again Christian. Or a Jehovah’s Witness. Or a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, where all our neighbours go. But I definitely wouldn’t entirely rule out considering Catholicism. At some stage.”
Sister Brunhilda opened her mouth to speak.
“And,” I interrupted, “as my mother always says, you should wait till you’re really sure, till you really want something, to decide. Then you appreciate it more. And if I did choose to be a Catholic, you’d want me really to appreciate being one. Wouldn’t you?”
“Ja, of course. But – ”
“You see,” I continued, starting to enjoy myself, “that’s what happened with school. My mother let us all decide when we wanted to go. And where we wanted to go. And I only decided this year. But that’s why I love the Convent so much. It’s because I took so long to decide and because I waited till I was completely sure. And choosing your religion, Sister, has to be more important than choosing your school.”
“No, of course!”
“So,” I said apologetically, “it’s obviously going to take me at least a bit longer. But I promise I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
For a few moments, Sister Brunhilda eyed me with a mixture of despair and profound frustration. Then she sighed, cocked her head, and smiled. “Vel, Hobbin, I am sure zat ve are all very pleased to have you with us here.”
∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧
Twenty-Three
Lulu and Damien
Back on the farm for the long Christmas holidays, Mum studied my report with a look of mild disbelief. “Well, I never!” she said thoughtfully. “This is fascinating.”
“Good, hey? Told you I worked hard.”
Mum frowned. “You know?, of course, Robbie, that it doesn’t matter where you come in class…only that you do the best you can do…”
I rolled my eyes.
Mum returned to the report. “But, nevertheless, this is still amazing.”
“Why are you looking so surprised?”
“Well,” said Mum, “to tell you the truth, I had no idea how you’d fare against your peers. And now don’t be offended by this, but I always thought you three were all, well, rather average.”
“What?”
Mum smiled gently. “But now I see I must have judged you too harshly…Not being a trained teacher, I just didn’t really know what to expect of children your age…Fascinating…look at this, Keith.”
Dad examined the little white booklet. “Very good,” he said. “Personally, I reckon your most impressive achievement is being not a baptised daughter of not a missionary and still getting Sister Brunhilda’s seal of approval. “Hobbin haj dhown commendable interest and done vet.” Vel indeed!”
I said, “She’s hoping I’ll become a Catholic.”
Dad said, “Well, if things carry on as they are, I might become a missionary doctor first.” He smiled grimly. “Don’t get so many of my profitable hypochondriacs these days.”
♦
A week later, Damien, who’d decided to go to school just a few months after me, returned to the farm for his Christmas holidays.
We had dinner by candlelight outside, in the new thatched gazebo beside the pool: all five of us together again for the first time in six months, the longest ‘we’d ever all been apart.
Mum was beaming uncontrollably, looking from face to face.
Dad said, “Just when I thought I was getting rid of the little blighters.”
“Keith!”
“If you want them closer, Lin, we can always send them to Pikfontein.”
Damien mumbled, “I could definitely donner them now.”
Dad said, “Don’t mumble, lad.”
“Sorry,” grunted Damien.
Mumbling and grunting were both part of Damien’s new heightened coolness from school, and for the first few days after his return, we barely understood a word he said.
When Damien had suddenly announced he wanted to go to school, Mum, being Mum, at once said of course. The only thing she cared about was that he didn’t go to Zimbabwe, where she felt the old-fashioned, ultra-disciplined all-boys schools would bring out the worst in Damien’s ‘potentially rebellious nature’.
Dad’s old school in Grahamstown in South Africa she dismissed, too, as being of a similar ilk. Dad, who didn’t usually feel so strongly about our education, agreed.
“Look how badly I turned out,” he said.
Mum said, “Give me a bit of time, I’ll think of something.”
Which Mum, as Mum always managed to do, did.
In this case, she thought of it listening to a South African radio programme that was featuring a new progressive school in the Franschhoek wine lands in the Cape. The syllabus ‘was flexible and practically oriented, the classes were small, and there were no uniforms.
The moment the programme finished, Mum picked up the phone and called the school. A few weeks later Damien was enrolled at Bridge House. Undaunted by the fact that the school had no boarding facilities, and – unlike in Bulawayo – knowing no one in the town, Mum enlisted the help of the headmaster, who sent a circular to the parents, asking if anyone would be prepared to let a boy from Botswana board with them. Three families offered, and we flew to Cape Town to choose Damien’s new ‘parents’.
Now back from his first term, Damien said little about it, except for mumbling, “School’s kif,” as he hitched up his new enormous shorts.
He walked a few paces, and the shorts redescended.
“Sis, Didge,” said Lulu. “We can see your undies.”
“So.”
I said, “At least he has an incentive to change them now.”
Mum said, “Damien’s just making up for lost time of not being cool.”
Damien’s report said things like, “Very bright, but could try harder.”
“You should try harder, then,” I admonished.
“Why?” he mumbled. “I pass. And I don’t want to be a boffin like you.”
“Don’t mumble. And I’m not a boffin. And you shouldn’t care so much what other people think.”
Damien grinned mildly. “I don’t, Rob. I just prefer practising roller hockey.”
Lulu said, “You care about looking cool.”
Dad said, “Will you three stop ruining the bloody peace.”
♦
Every non-clinic evening, as the sun sank large and golden over the bush, we’d walk or drive down the dusty road to the banks of the Lotsane, where we’d clamber into the boats and paddle up the still water. If the light was right, the water was a perfect mirror: the lush, elegant trees inverted back down, the ripples of the boat in the centre creating small waves in the orangey watery sky.
The trees were growing, too. Now, at last, after one false start, they had water all year round. The first dam on the Lot-sane, built by Actually Festus, had been quickly and completely washed away. Dad had said philosophically, “Rather the dam than the house.” And unperturbed, he’d set about building a bigger and better one. The new dam was splendid – reinforced by solid concrete buttresses, with large gabions to stabilise the banks, the wire cages bulging with massive immovable rocks – holding water that backed up the winding river for nearly a kilometre.
Fiddian Green no longer had to trek to the Limpopo when his pool dried up.
From the dam wall, we’d paddle upstream until we reached the sharp bend in the river, where the bottom of the canoes scraped against barely submerged rocks, and the water ended in a great expanse of flat granite rock that swept up the right bank. Here we’d clamber out onto the warm stone, sipping drinks in the last of the light and studying the water for crocs.
This rocky vantage point was also the planned site of Dad’s next dam.
“When it’s full,” he said, sweeping his hand up the river, “we’ll have three ki
lometres of water. Imagine that, chaps. Imagine the tree growth.”
Striding up and down the rocks, talking to no one in particular, Dad explained why the location of the wall was perfect for holding the most water and at the same time preventing eddies gouging out the bank and eating around the ‘wall. He smiled as he spoke and gesticulated, all the deepening marks of strain from his work vanishing here, down by the river, where the tonic of the bush was at its most potent.
The smell of dust and the pungent scent of waterbuck somewhere nearby lingered in the air. In the trees opposite, vervet monkeys chatted nosily, peering down at us, shaking the leaves as they sprang between branches. Far upstream, a lone kudu, legs slightly splayed, drank from a pool in the golden sand soon to be concealed by Dad’s new grand dam’s waters. Downstream, perched on rocks that poked above the water, brilliant white egrets stared languidly at the surface, where fish plopped and darted, eating and avoiding being eaten. The eyes and snout of a crocodile appeared briefly, and then sank below again.
After months away, it was newly breathtaking: vividly and profoundly beautiful, peaceful but bursting with life, which was ferocious but fragile and delicately but perfectly balanced. Around us here was an entire intense world, fiercely present, where past and future were all but irrelevant.
On Lulu, Damien, and me, as on Dad, this world worked its magic too: smoothing the readjustments needed when best friends and ever-present companions are suddenly not there, and then, suddenly, back again. Day by day, it coaxed us gently back into life and friendship as before: I stopped prattling about loving school, Damien grunted less and adopted his old shorts, and Lulu ceased lamenting that Damien and I had changed.
The farm was a small bubble that dispelled the concerns and hang-ups of the world beyond. And it was the river, its most exquisite epicentre, that catalysed the final shedding of our new brittle skins.
It was about two weeks after we’d been reunited, and we’d lingered later than usual in the canoes, watching from the water as the first stars appeared. By the time we glided to a stop, the plastic edges of the boats nudging the dam wall, it was almost completely dark.
