Embrace (12 page)

‘She was the loveliest girl I ever saw. There were attractive girls in Tanga and Dar, but your mother had a body, jirre, like nothing in Tanganyika. And she looked like Ingrid Bergman. There’s a bioscope you’ll see one day — I’ll ask Uncle Michael to bring it when they come from Toti — with Humphrey Bogart.
Casablanca
it’s called. Everyone in Arusha went to see it and all the women started wearing their hair like Ingrid Bergman. A bit longer than it is now. So when I met your mother, I was immediately in love with her. Asked her to marry me that first week. I’m a leg man, you know. Like Uncle Michael is a boob man. I’m a leg man, I mean, look, look.’

From the kitchen table, Bok nodded towards Bokkie, whom we could see through the opening of the elevated kitchen wall. I took in my mother, bent over the cactus garden and rockery, the backs of her brown legs, beautiful to me already then, facing us; her short dress tucked into the side of her underpants. Clearing a few scraggly weeds from around the impala lilies that she had herself planted when we arrived, which were now flowering white with their star-shaped petals lined a deep pink. Flowering in the middle of the drought. Stars of Mkuzi, we called them. Instead of Star of Sabi as Bok’s book said.
Apocynaceae,
family oleander.
Amatungulu,
Jim said. We were not allowed to touch them as the sap was poisonous, could cause dreadful stomach cramps and vomiting.

‘Now, which man wouldn’t want to carry that catch back to his family in East Africa?’

At my insistence Bok was again telling how he had met Bokkie when he’d come to South Africa for army training. How he had married her and taken her to the farm in East Africa. Bernice and Lena, back from Hluhluwe for the weekend, had also come to listen.

‘The bicycle shop, Bok. Start with the dance.’

‘We had a weekend pass,’ he began. ‘So, myself, Braam van Aarde, Len Maritz and a couple of the other colonial boys took the Jeep togo to the Friday dance at the Vastrap in Klerksdorp. Braam had gone to the Vastrap on his first pass and came back to camp in Potchefstroom and told us about the dollies. Old Braam had tall stories to tell about the girls — all lookers — he said were interested in him, but we knew he was colouring the truth because Braampie was no oil painting, to say the least. Fate was on my side that night because I was dating Sonja Myburg and she and I were meant to go to the bioscope — the 20th Century — in Potch that night. I think it’s still there, in Kerkstraat. Anyway, so Braam and Len convinced me to cancel Sonja Myburg because they wanted me to do the driving back from Klerksdorp. They knew I could handle my grog. None of you kids will ever see your father drunk. I promise you that. Uncle Michael may show himself to Stephanie and James drunk, but you three will not see me in that state. But Braam and Len, I mean, just like Uncle Michael, three four beers and they’d be swinging across the road. Couldn’t handle it. So, anyway, we went and were doing the sakkie-sakkie, and the jive, and then I see this girl coming past me, doing the twist with another guy. And I see her from behind — just like this — white dress with big blue flowers, perfect rhythm, and her face, sort of shy and when she smiles it’s a timid smile, like maybe it’s her first dance but you can see from her rhythm it’s not. So, next number I go to her standing with a group of girls and I ask her to dance. We danced for the rest of the night. Oh, she loved Elvis.’

I could see them in my mind’s eye. Bok and Bokkie, just like when Bok put on the Patsy Cline or the Jim Reeves or the waltzes and they danced in each other’s arms on the lounge’s cement floor. Only in my story my mother wore a long white dress that was wide and glittered like Cinderella’s in the illustrations of
The Tales of Grimm.
In the story my father called her Katie like others did, not Bokkie, and she called him Ralph, like everyone else. And Ralph wore a black suit with a yellow rose on his lapel and they were gliding in a big ballroom, sweeping around while a huge orchestra played from a balcony besidea marble staircase that grew wider the closer it got to the dance floor. And Katie—

‘I found out she was working in Klerksdorp as the receptionist at Otto’s Bicycles. So I got off drill one Friday afternoon and drove from Potch to Klerksdorp. She was there, alone, hiding from me behind an upturned bicycle on the counter. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. A year later we tied the knot. Everyone from Tanga, Oljorro, Dar and Arusha came down for the wedding — all in convoy from East Africa. For our honeymoon we drove back up, a two-week trip in Uncle Michael’s new Valiant. Then Bokkie had to learn to speak English and Swahili; I tell you, upesi, upesi.’

‘What’s upesi, upesi?’

‘Gijima, gijima.’

And what happened to the other woman? Sonja Mybuig?’ Lena asked.

‘Well, I passed her on to one of the other local boys who had fancied her anyway. Worked out nicely, fair and square for everyone.’

During the first two years I had neither cared for nor resented the Saturday sessions of compulsory letter-writing. They had become just another — perhaps less vexing — part of the way we lived. No more difficult to internalise as part of our culture than standing silendy in lines, not being late for class or choir, not talking during quiet time before or after lights-out, short showers, not washing or wetting hair without Uncle Charlie’s permission, no smoking, no screaming, no wet swimming trunks in lockers, hair cuts once a month, always sleeping for two hours in the afternoon before concerts, nothing except the day’s prescribed clothing on the body or in the wash, no roaming at the river without supervision, no food other than fruit to be removed from the dining hall, no back-chatting teachers or prefects, not fraternising with the black cleaners and kitchen staff, writing thank-you cards to host families, no playing in the orchards, always being friendly and polite on tour and to school visitors, speaking only Afrikaans one week and only English the next, attending interdenominational Sunday school on Friday evenings and interdenominational church service on Sunday morning, no running along the corridors, no food in the dorms, no hiding in the dorms during PT, no talking during prep.

Supervised by two roving on-duty teachers, the Saturday rooms were silent cells until noon, by which time all letters had to be handed in and checked. Once read and okayed, the letter could be folded, placed in an envelope and sealed in the presence of the teacher, then thrown on a pile. Postage became the school’s responsibility. Included in each quarter’s account for school fees was the bill for mailing.

I wrote two letters every week: one to my family, one to Alette. Occasionally one to Mumdeman at Midmar. Of late, I’d taken a liking to the epistolary period. During the week I jotted down notes of things I wished to include in my correspondence. My interest in letter-writing had germinated at least in part because of the fondness I was developing for Ma’am Sanders ever since Malawi. As our class teacher I found her fair and generous, lavishing as much attention on the weaker performers such as Bennie as she did on brainboxes like Niklaas Bruin and Mervyn; always inspirational in Latin and Art, where there were only six of us in each class. She was the kind of teacher who went the extra mile: always bringing in supplementary books, occasionally a film. As strict as she was and though our opinions were only rarely asked, I developed a sense that Ma’am took us seriously. That she was divorced from her husband — quite a scandal — and had a daughter at university and a son in the army doing national service all made her that bit more interesting. She was the first person I knew who was divorced. Somehow the fact that Bennie’s real father had died discounted his mother’s divorce from his stepfather.

Ma’am’s twin sister, Miss Hope, was a teacher at Port Natal. Lena,as if warning me about Ma’am, told me that Miss Hope strutted around with her nose in the air, full of airs and graces in addition to which she had favourites amongst the artsy
gatkruipers.
Even without meeting her, Miss Hope sounded as though she may be a lot like Ma’am. Everyone feared Ma’am, as had I before I got to know her. She was tall, quiet, strict, articulate, gaunt, and she herself was the first to say she didn’t suffer fools gladly. Since the Malawi tour we had not been allowed to call her Miss as we did all the other female teachers. Instead, she insisted she be addressed as Ma’am! How splendid I found the word, how round and rich and mature compared to the flat, snake-like and spiteful sound of Miss. Miss this, Miss that. Miss mistakenly missed missing miss’s miss.
Ma’am,
on the other hand, like
divorcee
and despite her aloofness, sounded like an invitation to conversation and repartee.

Initially it was only my essays Ma’am seemed to find intriguing. But recently, whenever she supervised letter-writing, she had started making light pencil markings in the text, suggesting I rewrite or reformulate certain paragraphs. These interventions never felt like the acts of censure our letters were sometimes subject to by the others — Marabou and Mr Buys in particular. Ma’am allowed us to write what we wanted, in most cases doing little more than a rudimentary skimming of the main points. Once though, she did ask Niklaas Bruin to rewrite a letter that bespoke the awful quality of our food. She told us she hated asking Niklaas to rewrite but that if she did not enforce the rule and if a consequent complaint came from parents she would get into trouble for not catching the taboo. Canings, poor food, homesickness — ‘anything that may cause your parents undue worry — when in fact the school takes perfect care of you’ — were not to be represented in letters.

Ma’am asked me to remian and clean the blackboard.

‘You write wonderful letters, Karl.’

I turned from the board: ‘Thank you, Ma’am.’

‘You have a gift, you know. You should work at it And on your drawing.’

I tried to suppress any outward show of the thrill: ‘How do you mean work on it, Ma’am?’

‘You have all these wonderful ideas in your letters. Particularly in those to your friend, what’s her name — Alette? Those to your parents are more reserved, but to Alette, wonderful, just like in your essays. But often you seem simply to blurt things out, instead of being conscious, deeply conscious of what you’re writing or drawing.’ She showed me a pencil sketch I’d done the previous week, of Cathkin Peak and Champagne Castle behind. Only shadows and light, no strong lines. ‘This drawing, the care you took with this. This is brilliant.’ She smiled, her green eyes sparkling at me. In that moment I wanted to reach out and touch her cheek. To tell her she was beautiful Knew that doing so was unimaginable. ‘You should write with infinite care. Think on the precise word you want to use . . . Consider each and every image . . . not be so careless. It’s not as if you’re in some race, Kad. Good writing — more than children — lasts a lifetime and beyond.’ My stomach had moved into my throat. If I was breathing it was not through my mouth or nose. It was, for that moment at least, as though God had appeared to me. Like her and I were back at Lake Malawi. The two of us, discussing Art.

She asked me to help carry books to her car. She was to visit friends in Bergville for the weekend. In one hand I grasped the grass basket she was taking along and allowed her to place the books in the fold of my free arm. On the stoep, as we passed the empty Standard Four classroom, she stopped, turned to me and said, ‘Carefully. Always write carefully. Carefully, carefully.’ She smiled and we walked on.

‘Like porcupines mate,’ I chirped, and smiled up at her.

‘Who’s Porcupine?’ she half frowned, half smiled at me, her head turned.

‘No, I mean . . .’ She hadn’t caught the stupid joke and for somereason I felt uncomfortable, that I was being overfamiliar, and thought an explanation inappropriate.

‘No, it’s silly. Nothing, Ma’am. But my thoughts come quickly, Ma’am. I just write what I think.’The stoep was shaded from the noon sun that glared down directly onto the corrugated iron roof. The quad was deserted and I wondered where everyone was.

‘Then you will have to learn to go back,’ she said. ‘Check that you’re writing everything as precisely and as creatively as possible. You can always go back and change things, you know, there’s always more paper. Just ask.’ For a second I wondered whether she was flirting with me. Enjoyed the thought.

Her red VW Passat was parked beneath a wattle next to the two rondavels where Mr Selbourne lived. ‘Karl,’ she said, opening the back door, ‘when you read poetry in class, it is very moving. And you write these letters, packed with information . . .’ She smiled again and I felt sure this could be a come-on. ‘Why don’t you stay out of trouble — as you have over the past few months — and rather concentrate on your writing . . . Observe, take things in rather than waste your time being mischievous.’ But then she gave me a strange, almost pleading look, before bending to place the books on the floor behind the passenger seat. This was not flirtation, no, this was mothering. I suddenly wondered whether she knew about Mr Cilliers. They are close friends, I thought. Would he tell her? Never, he—

‘Do you know what a sonnet is?’ She interrupted my thoughts.

‘I’m not sure, Ma’am. It’s a poem, I think.’

Leaning back into the car she brought out two books, one fat and one thinner. She handed me the fat one: The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. ‘I’ll lend you this. Look after it.’

‘Thank you, Ma’am. I will, Ma’am.’

‘And take this for good measure.’ I glanced down at the tatty paperback she placed atop the dictionary. Strips of yellowing Sellotape pasted along the spine and along the edges of some of the pages held the book intact.

‘Thank you, Ma’am.’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you had a talent for writing?’

I said no, no one had.

‘I’ve seen you up in that little library often, Karl.’ Both her hands were resting on the Passat’s open door frame. She wore no nail polish and I could smell her familiar slightly spicy perfume. “You enjoy reading, obviously, have you ever tried writing your own short story? Or a poem?’ ‘No, Ma’am. I did write a . . .’ I stopped myself. ‘No Ma’am, I’ve only written essays for class.’