A Dry White Season (23 page)

“If only you would tell me what you were looking for,” Ben remarked after some time, “I could save you a lot of time and trouble. I’m not hiding anything.”

Stolz looked up — he was working on the third drawer fromthe desk-and said laconically: “Don’t worry, Mr Du Toit. If there’s anything of interest to us, we’ll find it.”

“I was just trying to make it easier for you.”

“It’s our job.”

“You’re very thorough.”

Across the pile of drawers the dark eyes looked at him. “Mr Du Toit, if you knew what we’re working with every day of our lives, you would understand why we’ve got to be thorough.”

“Oh I appreciate it."He was almost amused.

But Stolz replied sternly, even sharply: “I’m not so sure you really appreciate it. That’s the problem with people who start criticising. They don’t realise they’re just paving the way for the enemy. You won’t catch those Communists napping, mark my word. They’re at it, every hour of the day and night.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Captain.”

A brief pause, before Stolz replied: “I just wanted to make sure you understand. It isn’t as if we always enjoy what we’ve got to do.”

“But there may be more than one way of doing it, Captain,” he said calmly.

“I can understand that you’re upset about having your place searched,” said Stolz, “but believe me—”

“I wasn’t talking about this little visit,” Ben said.

All over the room the men suddenly stopped working: the rustling sound, like the feeding of a multitude of silkworms in a big box, fell silent. Outside, in the distance, a bicycle bell shrilled.

“Well, what are you talking about then?” asked Stolz.

They were all waiting for him to say it. And he decided to accept the challenge.

“I’m referring to Gordon Ngubene,” he said. “And to Jonathan. And to many others like them.”

“Do I understand you correctly?” asked Stolz very calmly. The scar on his face seemed to turn even whiter than before. “Are you accusing us—”

“All I said was there may be more than one way of doing your job.”

“You’re suggesting—”

“I leave that to your own conscience, Captain.”

In silence the officer sat gazing at him across the piled-up stuff in the small room. All the others were there too, a room filled with eyes: but they were irrelevant. He and Stolz were isolated from them. For that was the one moment in which he suddenly knew, very quietly and very surely: it was no longer a case of “them", a vague assortment of people, or something as abstract as a “system”: it was
this man.
This thin pale man standing opposite him at this moment, behind his own desk, with all the relics and spoils of his entire life displayed around them.
It’s you. Now I know you. And don’t think you can silence me just like that. I’m not Gordon Ngubene.

It was the end of their conversation. They didn’t even continue searching much longer, as if they had lost interest. Perhaps they hadn’t intended it very seriously anyway, a mere flexing of muscles, no more.

After they had replaced the drawers and closed the cupboard and the filing cabinet, Venter found a foolscap page on the desk, bearing Herzog’s name and a series of brief notes on the interview. That was confiscated, together with all the other papers and correspondence on the desk, and Ben’s journals; he was given a handwritten receipt of which they retained a duplicate.

Returning to the house they asked to be shown the bedroom. Susan tried to intervene: this, she felt, was too private, the humiliation too blatant. Stolz offered his apologies, but insisted on going through with the search. A concession was made, though, by allowing Susan to stay behind in the lounge in young Venter’s company, while Ben showed the others the way to the bedroom. They wanted to know which bed was his, and which wardrobe, and briefly examined his clothes and looked under his pillow; one of the men got on a chair to check the top of the wardrobe; another flipped through the pages of the Bible and the two books on his bedside table. Then they returned to the lounge.

“Can I offer you some coffee?” Susan asked stiffly.

“No thank you, Mrs Du Toit. We still have work to do.”

At the front door Ben said: “I suppose I should thank you for behaving in such a civilised way.”

Unsmiling, Stolz replied: “I think we understand oneanother, Mr Du Toit. If we have reason to suspect that you’re keeping anything from us, we’ll be back. I want you to know that we have all the time in the world. We can turn this whole house upside down if we want to.”

Behind the formality of his tone and attitude Ben caught a glimpse, or imagined that he did, of a man in a locked office under a burning electric bulb, methodically going about his business, for days and nights if necessary: to the absolute end if necessary.

After they had gone he remained inside the closed front door for a minute, still conscious of the distance he felt between himself and the world. Almost tranquillity; perhaps even satisfaction.

Behind him he heard the sound of their bedroom door being closed. A key was turned. As if it were necessary! He was in no frame of mind to face Susan anyway.

Thought and feeling were still suspended. He couldn’t – he wouldn’t – start probing what had happened. All reactions were mechanical.

He went through the house to the garage and started planing a piece of wood – aimlessly, simply to keep himself occupied. Gradually his activity became more planned, more definite, even though there was no deliberate decision involved. He started making a false bottom for his tools cupboard, fitting it so neatly that no one would ever suspect its presence. In future, if ever he had anything he wanted to keep from their prying eyes, this was where he would hide it. For the moment the sheer physical action was sufficient in itself. Not an act of self-protection, but a counter move, something positive and decisive, a new beginning.

9

Wednesday 11 May.
Strange day. Yesterday’s visit by the Special Branch. Difficult to explore on paper, but I must. Writing it out in full sentences is salutary, like breathing deeply. Will try. A frontier crossed. So definite that from now on I’ll be able to divide my life in Before and After. The way one talks about the Flood. Or the apple, the fruit of the Fall, that perilous knowledge. One can speculate about it beforehand, but you’re unprepared when it happens. A finality, like I suppose death, which one can only get to know by experiencing it. Even while it was happening I didn’t realise it as keenly as I do now. Too dazed, I imagine. But now: today.

Everything wholly strange. Children who say “good morning” and whose faces you see without recognising them or knowing why they are addressing you. A bell that sends you from classroom to classroom and which you obey without knowing the reason. When you open your mouth it is without any foreknowledge of what will follow. It happens by itself. Your own words seem unfamiliar to you, your voice comes from far away. Every building, every room, the tables and benches, the blackboard, pieces of chalk, everything is strange. Nothing wholly dependable. You have to assume that, previously, you managed to pick your way through it all, that in some mysterious way you “belonged", but it is inexplicable now. Inside you is a manner of knowing which you cannot share with anyone else. Nothing as commonplace as a “secret” (“Guess what: they searched my house yesterday”). Something essentially different. As if you now exist in another time and another dimension. You can still see the other people, you exchange sounds, but it is all coincidence, and deceptive. You’re
on the other side.
And how can I explain it in the words of “this side"?

Third period free. Wandered about outside among the rockeries. Was it the autumn air? The leaves falling, the clear anatomy of the trees. No disguise, no ambiguity. But more strange than ever. From time to time a voice from a classroom, a phrase called out, unconnected with anything else. From the far end of the building someone practising scales, the same ones over and over. As basic as the trees, equally terrifying and meaningless.

In the hall the choir singing. The anthem. For the Administrator’s visit in a week or so. The music broken up in parts. First, second; boys, girls; then all together.
At thy will to live or perish, O South Africa, dear land.
Once more please.
At thy will to live or perish.
No, that’s not good enough. Come on.
At thy will to live or perish.
That’s better. Now right from the beginning.
Ringing out from our blue heavens.
Open your mouths. At thy will to live at thy will to live at thy will to live or perish or perish or perish. The whole lot of us will perish. All you sweet young children, innocent voices singing, girls blushing and peeping at the boys, hoping this morning’s acne ointment is covering up the blemishes; boys poking each other in the ribs with rulers or passing on cryptic notes in sweaty hands. At thy will to live or perish, O South Africa, dear land!

And in a few minutes we’ll all be back in the classroom resuming our work as if nothing had happened. I’ll teach you about this land and its prevailing winds and its rainfall areas, ocean currents, mountain ranges and rivers and national products, of efforts to produce rain and to control the ravages of dry seasons. I’ll teach you where you come from: the three small ships that brought the first white men, and the first bartering with Harry’s Hottentots, and the first wine, and the first Free Burghers settling on the banks of the Liesbeek in 1657. The arrival of the Huguenots. The dynasty of the Van der Stel governors, and the options open to them: Simon aiming at a concentration of whites at the Cape, allowing natural class differences to develop; his son Willem Adriaan opting for expansion, encouraging the stock farmers to explore the interior and settle among the natives; racial friction, disputes, frontier wars. 1836: Boer emigrants in a mass exodus in search of liberty and independence elsewhere. Massacres, annexations of the newly conquered land; temporary victory for the Boer Republics. Followed by the discovery of diamonds at Kimberley and gold at the Witwatersrand; the influx of foreigners and the triumph of British imperialist interests. Anglo-Boer War, concentration camps, Lord Milner, anglicisation in the schools. 1910: Unification and a new beginning, “South Africa first". Boers rebelling against the decision of their own government to support Britainin 1914. Impoverished farmers flocking to the cities. The mine revolts of ‘22, Boers and Bolshevists against the Imperialists. Official recognition of the Afrikaans language. Translation of the Bible, 1933. Coalition government. War. Afrikaners moving underground in the Ossewa-Brandwag. The indestructible dream of a Republic. And at last, a Nationalist Government in power. So you can see for yourselves, boys and girls, we’ve come a long way. Remember the words of the young Bibault in the revolt against Van der Stel in 1706: “I shall not go I am an Afrikaner and even if the landdrost kills me or puts me in jail I refuse to hold my tongue.” Our entire history, children, can be interpreted as a persistent search for freedom, against the dictates of successive conquerors from Europe. Freedom expressed in terms of this new land, this continent. We Afrikaners were the first freedom fighters of Africa, showing the way to others. And now that we have finally come to power in our own land, we wish to grant the same right of selfdetermination to all the other nations around us. They must have their own separate territories. Peaceful coexistence. Plural development. It is an expression of our own sense of honour and dignity and altruism. After all, we have no choice. Outside this vast land we have nowhere to go. This is our fate.
At thy will to live or perish, 0 South Africa, our land!
No, I’m afraid it’s not good enough. Try again.

This vast land. The train journeys of my boyhood. The last stage on the sideline to our station: seven hours for those thirty-five miles. Stopping at every siding, loading or unloading milk cans, taking in coals or water: stopping in the middle of nowhere, in the open veld, heat-waves rippling on the horison. A name painted on a white board, so many feet above sea-level, so many miles from Kimberley, so many from Cape Town. The pure senselessness of it all heightened by the fact that everything is recorded so fastidiously. What the hell does it matter that this is the name of the station, or that it is so many miles away from the next?

From a very early age one accepts, or believes, or is told, that certain things exist in a certain manner. For example: that society is based on order, on reason, on justice. And that, whenever anything goes wrong, one can appeal to an innate decency, or commonsense, or a notion of legality in people to rectify the error and offer redress. Then, without warning, there occurs what Melanie said and what I refused to believe: you discover that what you accepted as premises and basic conditions – what you had no choice but to accept if you wanted to survive at all – simply does not exist. Where you expected something solid there turns out to be just nothing. Behind the board stating a name and heights and distances there is a vacuum disguised, at most, by a little corrugated iron building, milk cans, a row of empty red fire-buckets. Nothing.

Everything one used to take for granted, with so much certainty that one never even bothered to enquire about it, now turns out to be illusion. Your certainties are proven lies. And what happens if you start probing? Must you learn a wholly new language first?