A Dry White Season (39 page)

From time to time he went off on one of his “trips", to Botswana, or Lesotho, or Swaziland. Smuggling, most likely. (But what? Hash, money, guns, or men—?)

In the last week of January Phil Bruwer had to go back to hospital. He hadn’t had another attack, but his condition had deteriorated so much that the doctors felt he should be keptunder constant surveillance. Melanie had to fly back from the Cape, abandoning the project she’d been working on. A few times she and Ben visited the old man together, but it was depressing as, for once, it seemed as if his indomitable spirit had given up.

“I’ve never been afraid to die,” she told Ben. “I can accept whatever happens to myself and I’ve been close enough to death to realise it doesn’t make so much difference.” Her large black eyes turned to him: “But I’m scared for him. Scared of losing him.”

“You’ve never been afraid of loneliness before.”

She shook her head pensively. “It’s not that. It’s the bond as such. The idea of continuity. A sort of reassuring stability. I mean, anything outside one may change, one may change oneself, but as long as you know there’s something that goes on unchanged, like a river running down to the sea, you have a sense of security, or faith, or whatever you want to call it. Sometimes I think that is why I have such an overwhelming urge to have a child.” A deliberate, mocking laugh. “You see, one keeps clinging to one’s own little hope for eternity. Even if you’ve given up Father Christmas.”

12 February.
And now Susan. Have noticed something in her these last few days. Thought it was just a new phase in her nervous state, in spite of the sedatives she takes in ever growing doses. But this time it turned out to be different, and worse. Her contract with the SABC revoked finally. Convincing arguments about “new blood” and “tight budget” etc. But the producer she usually worked with told her the truth over a cup of tea. The fact that she was my wife was becoming an embarrassment to them. One never knew when my name might be linked to some scandal. He didn’t know where it came from. His superiors had simply told him that they had “information".

It all came out last night. When I came into the bedroom she sat waiting for me. The day after Christmas she’d moved into the bedroom that used to be the girls', so I was wary of this unexpected new overture. She in her nightie without a gown, seated on the foot of my bed. A nervous, twitching smile.

“You not asleep yet?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I was waiting for you.”

“I still had some work to do.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

The trivialities, the inanities one can indulge in!

“I thought you were going to the theatre tonight?” I said.

“No, I cancelled it. Didn’t feel like it.”

“It would have done you good to go out.”

“I’m too tired.”

“You’re always tired nowadays.”

“Does it surprise you?”

“It’s my fault. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Suddenly a hint of panic in her: “I’m sorry, Ben. Please, I didn’t come here to reproach you for anything. It’s just – it
can’t
go on like this.”

“It won’t. I’m sure something will happen soon. One has just got to see it through.”

“Every time you believe ‘something will happen'. Can’t you see it’s only getting worse? Just worse and worse all the time.”

“No.”

Then she told me about the SABC.

“It’s the only thing I had left to keep me going, Ben.” She began to cry, even though I could see she was trying to fight it. For a while I stood looking at her hopelessly. If a thing like this goes on so slowly, day by day, you tend not to notice the difference. But last night, I don’t know why, I suddenly looked at our wedding portrait on the wall above the dressing table. And it shook me to think it was the same woman. That beaming, self-assured, strong, healthy, blond girl and this weary old woman in the nightie made for someone much younger, the pathetic white lace leaving her arms bare, the loose folds of skin on her upper arms, the wrinkly neck, the streaks of grey no longer camouflaged in her hair, the face distorted with crying. The same woman. My wife. And my fault?

After a while I sat down beside her, holding her so she could cry properly. Her sagging breasts. She didn’t even try to hide them: she who’d always been so ashamed of her body when it was young and beautiful. Now that she’d grown old she didn’t mind my seeing. Was it carelessness or despair?

How is it possible that even in agony, even in revulsion, onecan be roused to desire? Or was it something I tried to avenge on her? All those years of inhibitions; the passion I had discovered in her on a few rare and unforgettable nights of our life together, only to be almost aggressively repressed afterwards. Sin, wrong, evil. Always occupied, always busy, running, achieving things, grasping at success, frantic efforts to deny the body and its real demands. And now, all of a sudden, pressed against me, exposed, exhibited, made available. Blindly I took her, and in our agonising struggle she left the imprint of her nails on my shoulders as she cried and blubbered against me; and for once it was I who turned away in shame afterwards, remaining with my back to her.

A very long time.

When she spoke again at last her voice was completely controlled.

“It didn’t work, did it?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“I’m not talking about tonight. All these years.”

I didn’t answer, reluctant to argue.

“Perhaps we never tried hard enough. Perhaps I never understood you properly. Neither of us really understood, did we?”

“Susan, we’ve brought up three children. We’ve always got along fine.”

“Perhaps that’s the worst. That one can get along so well in hell.”

“You’re exhausted, you’re not seeing it the way you should.”

“I think for the first time in my life I’m seeing it as I should.”

“What are you going to do?”

I looked round. She was sitting upright, the bedspread drawn defensively round her shoulders in spite of the warm night.

“I want to go to my parents for a while. Just to regain my balance. To give you a chance. So that we can think it over calmly and clearly. It’s no use if we’re both so involved that we can’t breathe properly.”

What could I do? I nodded. “I suppose you do need a holiday.”

“So you agree?” She got up.

“It was your idea.”

“But you think I should go?”

“Yes, to breathe some fresh air. To give us a chance, as you said.”

She went as far as the door. I was still sitting on the bed.

She looked round: “You’re not even trying to hold me back,” she said, the passion in her voice more naked than her misused body had been a little while ago.

The worst was that there was nothing I could say. Realising for the first time what a total stranger she was. And if she was a stranger to me, the woman I had lived with for so many years, how could I presume ever to understand anything else?

25 February.
I’m making fewer and fewer notes. Less and less to say. But it’s a year today. It feels like yesterday, that evening I stood in the kitchen eating my sardines from the tin.
A detainee in terms of the Terrorism Act, one Gordon Ngubene, has been found dead in his cell this morning. According to a spokesman of the Security Police
, etcetera.

And what have I achieved in this year? Adding everything together it still, God knows, amounts to nothing. I’m trying to persevere. I’m trying to persuade myself that we’re making progress. But how much of it is illusion? Is there anything I really know, anything I can be absolutely certain of? In weaker moments I fear that Susan might have been right: am I losing my mind?

Am I mad-or is it the world? Where does the madness of the world begin? And if it is madness, why is it permitted? Who allows it?

Stanley, two days ago already: Johnson Seroke shot dead by unknown persons. Emily’s Special Branch man, my one remaining hope. Now he too. Late at night, according to Stanley. Knock on the door. When he opened they fired five shots at point-blank range. Face, chest, stomach. Leading articles in several papers yesterday. Interviews with police officers: “All those voices that usually cry out against deaths in detention are strangely silent now that a member of the Security Police has died in the service of his country. This black man’s life, sacrificed on the altar of our national survival in theface of senseless terrorism, should be pondered by all those who never have a good word for the police and their ceaseless efforts to keep this country stable and prosperous—”

But I know why Johnson Seroke died. It doesn’t take much imagination.

How much longer must the list grow of those who pay the price of my efforts to clear Gordon’s name?

Or is this yet another symptom of my madness? That I am no longer able to think anything but the worst of my adversaries? That in a monstrous way I’m simplifying the whole complicated situation by turning all those from the “other side” into criminals of whom I can believe only evil? That I turn mere suspicions into facts, in order to place them in the most horrible light? If this is true I have become their equal in every respect. A worthy opponent!

But if I can no longer believe that right is on my side, if I can no longer believe in the imperative to go on: what will become of me?

12

7 March.
Beginning, end, point of no return: what was it? Decisive, undoubtedly. Separate from everything else that has happened so far – or rooted in it? Have been going round for days now, unable to write about it, yet desperate to do so. Frightened by its finality? Afraid of myself? I can no longer avoid it. Otherwise I shall never be able to get past it.

Saturday 4 March.

The rock-bottom of loneliness. No sign of Stanley since the news about Johnson Seroke. I know he has to be more careful than ever, but still. No word from Susan. Johan off to a farmwith friends. This is no life for a young boy. (But how touching when he said: “You sure you’ll be okay, Dad? I’ll stay here if you need me.”) More than a week since I last visited Phil Bruwer in hospital. Melanie working full-time. You reach a danger point if you’re forced to keep your own company for too long. The temptation of masochism.

But where to go, and who to turn to? Who has not rejected me yet? Young Viviers? The jovial Carelse? Until they, too, have to pay the price. I suppose the Rev Buster may have welcomed me. But I couldn’t face the prospect of discussing the state of my soul with him. I don’t think my soul is really so important any more.

Tried to work. Forced myself to go through all my notes again, turning the sorting process into some game of solitaire. Then stacked away everything again in the tools cupboard and drove off.

But the old house with the curved verandah was dark and empty. Walked round it. Cats’ saucers on the back stoep. No curtains drawn but everything dark inside. What room hers? As if it mattered! Simply to know, to draw some solace from it. Adolescent. That’s why older men should steer clear of love. Makes them ridiculous.

Sat on the front steps for a long time, smoking. Nothing happened. Almost relieved when I got up to go to the front gate. Felt “saved". Dear God, from what? Fate worse than death? Ben Du Toit, you should have your head read.

Still, much more at peace. Resigned to going home again and facing my solitude.

But before I’d reached the gate – I really have to fix it for them one day, the slats are falling out – her small car turned into the back yard. I actually felt almost regretful. It might have been avoided so easily. (How can I talk about “avoiding"? At that moment, surely, I had no anticipation, no hope, no conception of what was to happen. And yet it seems to me there must be such subtle subterranean ways of knowing in advance.)

“Ben?!” When she saw me coming round the corner of the house. “Is that you? You gave me a fright.”

“I’ve been here for a while. Was on the point of leaving.”

“I went to see Dad in hospital.”

“How is he?”

“No change.”

She unlocked the kitchen door and unhesitatingly led the way down the dark passage – I stumbled over a cat – to the living room. The murky yellow light seemed to illuminate more than just the room. She was wearing a dress with a prim high collar.

“I’ll make us some coffee.”

“Shall I give you a hand?”

“No. Make yourself at home.”

The room became meaningless without her. From the kitchen came sounds of cups tinkling, the hiss of a kettle. Then she came back. I took the tray from her. We sat drinking in silence. Was she embarrassed too? But why? I felt like a stranger on a formal visit.

When her cup was empty she put on a record, turning the volume down very low.

“More coffee?”

“No thanks.”