Embrace (35 page)

He broke off as applause drifted from the auditorium. Slid the glasses back into place. He said we were to be punished for our crime and defilement in a way that we would never forget. He said expulsion was really what we deserved — expulsion not only from the school, but from the human race — but that they had decided to be lenient, mostly for the sake of our parents and to spare the school public disgrace. He said that we would be punished in a way that would stay with us for the rest of our days; a way that would stand as a beacon of light to keep us from ever again venturing off God’s blessed path of spiritual and bodily holiness. And then, as Mathison broke off, Buys rose from his chair. I wanted to cry. I had never been caned by Buys. The very reason for our being on earth had been erased by this deed. ‘The very reason your parents brought you into the world.’ For a year and half I had managed to stay out of his claws; through hundreds of cuts from Uncle Charlie, Mr Mathison, both Junior and Secondary Choir masters: and now it had come to this. Tchaikovsky’s ‘None But the Lonely Heart’ was drifting from the auditorium. How many were we going to get? Six, so it was said, was the maximum. No one had ever heard of a boy getting more than six. And this was goingto be six. The severity — depravity — of what we had done warranted six, if God could swallow us into the earth, why, what heavenly reason did these men have to not give us each six of the best? The long johns! Oh mercy, mercy, will help, at least a little, cushion it a bit, please let it help against Buys, no, not much, but it will help, please, please don’t let me be first.

Buys took hold of Lukas’s shoulder and told him to bend forward and hold onto the desk. There was again the sound of applause. As the choir started on the Brahms lullaby, Buys lifted the cane till its tip almost touched the ceiling. It sang as it sped down, its force almost broke Lukas’s grip and he seemed to stumble forward. Dear Jesus, no, no, no. How can they allow this, we’ll die, better than telling Bok, Mervyn gulping, why, why, please not six. Then the next one. This time Lukas really held onto the desk; didn’t flinch. The third time Buys’s feet seemed to lift from the carpet as the cane struck Lukas, whose hands broke loose and he flew forward onto the desk, hands grabbing at nothing. If it’s like this for Lukas, we can’t make it; he’ll kill us. Lukas, coming up, straightened and turned to face Buys. Tears streamed down his cheeks, even as he grinned.

‘Bend, over, I’m not finished with you.’

Lukas turned back. Now his shoulders were shaking. The fourth cut ripped into his bum and he let out a cry, came up, swung around and began sobbing.

‘Next one.’

Oh my God, only four. Thank you, thank you. Only four. But why four why not three? Dear Jesus, if Lukas cries, how will I take it? None of us moved. Buys pointed.

Mervy. Mervy stepped forward. He bent and looked over his shoulder. Buys told him to face forward. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch. Not Mervy. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears; tell them that Mervy was going to scream, that the audience would hear. But the choir was singing, I don’t know what — any song, Rilke’s ‘Elegies’ by Holst, Poulenc’s ‘Litanies a la vierge noire’, Saint-Saens’s ‘A Saiutaris’ or ‘Tantum Ergo’ or Coplands ‘The House on the Hill’ — louder than anything till now. And Mervy did — a split second before the first cut into him — let out a scream and shot upright, clasping his hands to his bum, already sobbing. Buys grabbed him by the jacket, turned him back to the desk. Just as Buys was about to bring down the cane, Mervyn jumped up and almost sank to his knees as he faced the man with the cane still above his head. Applause from the auditorium. Buys yanked Mervy up by the hair, and held him down over the desk. Leipoldt’s ‘Boggom and Voetsek’, through the doors. He brought down the cane and again Mervyn screamed, turned his head while Buys held his neck. Mervy begged, howling. After the third cut, the denim on his bum had changed colour. It couldn’t be pee. After the fourth, Mervy no longer screamed, he just turned around and sobbed into his arms. I glanced at him stepping back into line, caught Lukas, who was still crying.

And then it is me. Please God, Jesus, no, no hate, Karl, hate, hate, be strong, hate, hate, strength comes from hate, don’t show them, show fucking Buys, try and be brave, Karl, don’t cry out, whatever you do, don’t cry out. I bend forward. Still Leipoldt, say with them: ’n hand vol gruis uit die Hantam wyk, wa-boom gnarrabos blare, gister was ek arm maar nou is ek ryk . . . Instead of holding with my arms forward, I lean across the desk’s surface and clasp my hands backwards around the overhang, almost resting my forehead on the glass. When it comes, against everything I will a white-hot iron thrust into my spine, I stumble forward, shoot upright and am at once crying; breathing through my mouth. I want to beg. Won’t beg, will not beg, won t help . . . But I cannot, cannot get myself to bend again. He takes me by the neck and turns me back to the desk. Applause, music, if I start screaming loud they’ll have to stop, but I cannot scream, everyone will know. The second also throws me up and I clasp my bum and sob, my face now turned to the ceiling. I see nothing. He is killing me. When I come up after the third, I am howling, looking from man to man, all three, pleading with my eyes, my sobs, my tears. The fourth, a fist offire in the small of my back, dizzying. I almost stumble as I fall back into line. My legs are trembling twigs, I sob and weep, I do not take in what is done to Bennie, I don’t care, kill him. The three of us, crying. Then, before I know what has happened to Bennie, he is beside me again.
Te Deum
from Britten’s
Requiem.

Buys must have put the cane down on the glass top and walked back to join the other two. No one spoke. When our crying had subsided, it was Mathison: ‘You four stand here tonight, drenched in shame. You are shame itself. That you must never doubt. None of you will ever speak about this again. Do you understand me?’

We sobbed, whimpered.

‘Answer me.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘You know what happened to Lot’s wife, don’t you? She turned into a pillar of salt. Lot se vrou, ’n Soutpilaar, verstaan julle my? Because she looked back.’ He paused. ‘Don’t look back at what you’ve done, never. Never speak about it, for to speak about it is to look back and to turn into a pillar of salt. You must move on.’ He again seemed on the verge of tears. I looked at him but could only catch phrases of what he was saying. Something by Samuel Barber.

‘You three, go.’ He motioned at the others. ‘Back to prep. You have been caned for not changing your sheets. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘I’ve had the chance to speak to you three alone. Now, Karl, I want to talk to you.’

The others had left and I alone faced the men. Like for the audition. Mathison said he had reason to suspect that, while I had not been the ringleader, I had egged the others on in our moral decrepitude. He said he had spoken extensively to the others. It was clear that I as much as Lukas had been the one to instigate the immorality.

Then, like another blow, this time final and to my head, he asked: ‘Karl. What is this business about goats?’

It is the slaughter. I want nothing; only to die. Please, please, let me die; let me vanish. I want to run. I want Bok, I want Bokkie. They who will not love me. Leave me alone! Let me be! I want to scream in helplessness. I am only a boy, I am only twelve. I am innocent.

‘The makwedini, Sir, in the kraals when I was small. They did it to the sheep,’ I sob, dragging my sleeves across my eyes, the snot-pit of my nose.

‘Then, why did you tell Miss Roos that you yourself had done it?’

Had Lukas said anything? How much did they know? No, they could kill Lukas, and he would not have said anything. Lie, Karl, lie, lie, lie for your life, cling to your tattered dignity.

‘I didn’t, Sir, I think Miss Roos misunderstood what I said, Sir.’

‘That is because they’re heathen savages, Karl. It is the most disgusting thing in the world. The poor animals have no choice; it is worse even than what you have been punished for tonight.’ Again he takes the black leather-bound book, opens it, reads.

My bum felt like red-hot coals had been thrown in there.

‘You grew up in Zululand, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Do the Zulus call their boys makwedini?’

Why was he asking this? I waited. He waited. An answer was expected of me. But what lurked behind his question? I answered: ‘No, Sir.’ Again I waited. He stared at me, wanting something to sink in to my recognition. That he knew I was lying.

Then it struck me. Oh Jesus, Jesus, why! Why! Why can’t you leave me alone, Lukas, umfaan, piccanin, kwedini, amakwetha, what does it matter, I just made a mistake with the word. Just a word. I wanted to cry again; wanted to beg them to leave me alone.

I shook my head.

‘No, they don’t, Karl, do they? Go.’

My head was going to burst; mad gene, vein in head, Bok oh please not find out, let it be over, cold, my bum, Mervy, snot on my jacket sleeve.

I walked through the freezing dark. Run away, go hide, in the caves, in a shell, in the bush, Mkuzi, why, past the concert hall where the Juniors are singing, maybe, then, for it was somewhere, through the door or through the window, I heard ‘Da Drausst Auf die Gruen Au’.

It was not Christmas, but they sang it that night.

Back to the classroom. I registered the schluck-schluck in my veld-skoens; realised that at some point during it all I had pissed myself.

Prep was over; the classroom empty. I walked upstairs to E Dorm. Applause and shouts of bravo, encore. Encore. A million thoughts and images — monkey-brain I might call it today. Somewhere in amongst those I was also struck by something else, something a writer in the retelling may withhold from revealing as a literary device to enhance affect or effect: during the whole eternity the four of us had spent in that office, then me alone, while the men sat there, while Buys had caned us, had sat there shaking his head, nodding and grunting while Mr Mathison read from the Holy Book and told us we represented the lowest forms of earthly life, the other one — sitting quiedy with his hands before him on the desk — had not moved. Not stirring, not speaking a word, not twitching a muscle, like a Sphinx, Mr Cilliers had sat there.

Jonas held the rams horns, bending its neck backwards while Boy and Bokkie held on to its twitching feet. Its eyes, bulging big and glassy, blinked rapidly. Then it struggled one more time, threw its horns from side to side. Bok brought the silver blade down onto the jugular — jutting and bulging — and in an instant — as the blade was jerked across — blood spurted in a thick red jet onto the sand. Within seconds the fountain turned first to little spurts from different veins, then to trickles running down the velvety brown hide. The blood curdled, made knots and blotches in the sand. You could pick it up — like soft pebbles that disintegrated with a slight rub. Then the cutting up began. This part for our biltong. That part for the kraal.

The back of his head, his shoulders, his back, moving over, hands above the piano, the piano keys. To his left, beside the organ, the ensemble, eyes on him, poised, concentrated. To his right, in front of the long windows, the soloists’ heads silhouetted against the late sun — Dominic, to his left with Erskin Louw, Gerhard Conradie and Mike van der Bijlt — nodding time. Text from the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation. Bassoon and double bass, then the cello and viola, D-A-E and then the move, gently, to E minor, gentle, gentle resolution to D major, then the brasses setting tone, solemn, careful, D major, then to B minor; B, orchestra repeats, voices — the magic of communion is about to happen — almost emulating the instruments: Erskin:
Sanctus
taken up by Gerhard, joined by Dominic, then Mike’s deep, diminuendo, soft brass, legato, repeated, calling a God of power and might:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus,

Deus, Sabaoth

Then the brass, almost inaudible the repetition of
Sanctus, sanctus
and he bounces, the staccato and crescendo quartet:

Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua

and the whole orchestra takes it up before Dominic comes in to the holy of holies with
Osanna in excelsis,
which the others repeat, dramatically, and Dominic’s final
excelsis
when at once it is over, carrying away into the afternoon quiet of school passages. The silence of a boarding schools deserted afternoon. I take them in together: joined in the music, the man and the boy. One’s head bowed, the other’s up, eyes closed. Intertwined. Auspicious. Dusts twirl and spiral like stars and planets in the rays of white sun.

Unaware of me up there. Looking down on them. How would I choose? It occurred to me that I may have to do that. If it was not already done. I would not think of it; if I do not think it, the choice does not exist. They spoke; the ensemble began to pack away instruments. The other soloists left. Dominic tarried. Voices and laughter. I leant over the balustrade, trying to hear what was being said or wanting to insinuate myself into the intimacy of their togetherness.

‘More tremolo . . . High G . . . Needs recitativo drammatico without losing your tone colour. But don’t push so hard. Your voice sounds tired . . .’

‘There’s something here that reminds me of Mozart . . . Requiem . . . My Grade Eight sonata . . .’

‘Haydn . . . Sonata form . . . Actually, Handel’s fugue patterns . . .’

Dominic looks up. I raise my hand and he his as he smiles. Jacques turns, lifts his gaze, and stops what he was saying. We stare, as if all three of us have caught each other out.

‘I thought you were going riding?’ Dom asks with his head thrown back.

‘Were back early, so I came to listen.’ I answer, standing up with my hands on the balustrade.

‘What do you think, Karl? Of the Sanctus?’

‘Brilliant, Sir,’ I say, hating myself for having nothing more original to offer, no way of entering their conversation as an equal.

‘Meet you outside,’ Dom says, and moves to the door. I turn to go, then look down again at Jacques. His eyes go to Dominic, then skim the hall before he nods at me, signals that I should come tonight.

He must have been nine or ten or thereabout. He was at the front door in the passage dressed in uniform with his box suitcase in hand, ready to walk to school. His sisters were already halfway down the asbestos driveway. He heard his mothers voice, angry, furious, growing louder in her and his fathers bedroom. He knew what he had done. His father came down the passage and he froze, terrified he was about to be beaten. But the man merely walked up to him and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Very gently. He spoke softly. He said many things — most of which the boy would later not remember — while he looked into the boy’s blue eyes with his own even bluer. The man may have smelt of smoke or Old Spice aftershave and toothpaste. Before turning and walking away, he said: ‘If you ever so much as think of doing it again, I will kill you.’

And we didn’t. Haven’t. Ever, spoken about it.

I found the three of them on their beds. Only Lukas looked up when I came in. Why was Almeida not there? Already in the shower? His towel was gone from the back of the locker; his riding cap was missing; his dressing gown no longer over Dominic’s on the hook. Almeida had evacuated E Dorm — I knew it without asking. For the previous three weeks, ever since Dominic’s departure, Steven had slept in Dominic’s bed. Now he was gone. I knew, again without needing input from any of them, that none of us would even mention his leaving. Almeida must have known: from the moments we were summoned from prep. I had; he must have. Suddenly I hated Steven. More applause from downstairs; long and drawn out. Who had told Steven to move back to C Dorm? Uncle Charlie, obviously. So, he knows too.

Their eyes — and I suppose mine — were still red and swollen. Mervy s face and neck were the clour of a beetroot, his red hair a scrubbing brush set in all directions. Only a blind, mad, idiot could not see our state. Who, for a second, would believe that they had done this to us for not changing sheets? Anybody and nobody. As much as I knew the four of us would not ever speak about it, I knew they had to suspect — as much as Almeida knew — that it had been me. I had betrayed them. And how, I wondered briefly, how had Mathison known to not call Almeida? How, how in the wide world of one hundred and twenty boys, did they know it was only the four of us, and not Almeida? Almeida had been there — that night — yet he hadn’t been called. What had Mathison said to each of them, as he called them in, ahead of me? Too many questions. Impossible to ask.

D Dorm was preparing for showers. Around me no one moved. I frowned at Lukas.

‘Uncle Charlie said were to wait. We’ll go after them.’

We always go with D. Uncle Charlie knows.

D bundled down their staircase to the showers. Uncle Charlie’s voice called up saying we were to get undressed, put on our gowns and wait till we were summoned. Of course he knows.

We began undressing. Bennie was the first out of his jeans.

‘Fuck, it was sore. Bastard, bastard, cunt, fucker, poes, hoer, moer, hond, teef, kont,’ he whispered. His bum, turned towards me, was covered in a series of angry ridges.

I peeled off my trousers. As I rolled down my long johns I smelt the pee before I saw the yellow stains all the way down the white hose.

Mervyn whimpered. He was bent forward, looking into the long johns now collapsed around his ankles. Pink smudges. He strained his neck to look over his shoulder at his buttocks, and as he turned I could see first just the pink of his bum and then the purple and red where the skin had been torn and open flesh stuck through the purple welts that sat there — an inch above the skin — like crusts of rugged red candle wax. I checked my long johns. Nothing. Just the pissstains. I turned my neck, to see my bum. With my fingertips I felt them, corrugations, huge, but mercifully no blood. How was Mervy ever going to sit? Lukas s bum: purple and swollen over the grey of a week before when he and Bennie had got it from Uncle Charlie for untidy lockers.

E Dorm was no longer called to shower with the other Standard Fives. Maybe ten days. I didn’t count. The four of us showered alone under Uncle Charlie’s supervision. Then he said that starting the following evening we were to go back to the old routine. Showers with D. It was only then I realised we had not permanently been banished. Uncle Charlie offered no explanation. I suspected it had to do with Mervyn’s bum. They had only wanted to prevent us from having to explain the chaos of Mervyn’s bum, and, to a lesser extent, the damage to our own.

The longer you sat, the easier it became; but it was winter, and the cold seemed to make it worse. Morning PT, which had always been one of the highlights of my day — the mist, the cold, the clouds of breath as we ran through the dewy grass of forest and veld — was horrible that first week: my buttocks were wounds wanting to tear loose and separate from my body. Riding was out of the question. Lukas said I should come with him for he refused to let a beating keep him from the stables. But I couldn’t face the pounding of the saddle. I wondered what Beauty thought if by chance she had seen the piss stains in my long johns on washday; or, more than my piss, Mervy s blood, also on his sheets and pyjamas. My and Lukas s bums — perhaps hardy from regular canings and the saddles — began to turn into psychedelic blue, green and yellow tattoos a while before Bennie’s and at least a week before Mervyn’s. As Bennie was caned as often as Lukas and I, I was fascinated that he, our hardy little Rottweiler, took so long to heal. The saddle, while it probably didn’t lessen the pain of the caning for Lukas and me, did seem to have a neutralising effect on the visible damage left afterwards.

Had Lukas or I — I wondered a few times before letting that and the betrayal go for ever — indeed been the instigators, that night? Had Lukas and I been the ones to suggest we do It? And if we were the ringleaders, who had come up with the idea first? That was not, by any measure, the way I remembered it, then or now. It just seemed to happen; without suggestion.

After lights-out, Bennie and I had snuck into D Dorm to terrorise Niklaas Bruin. Once Niklaas was crying and after we got back to E, we had pushed each other around playfully and said it was too early to go to sleep. Lukas suggested we get out onto the roof and watch the moon. All five of us, including Almeida, put on our dressing gowns-, got out of the window and walked down the side of the slanted corrugated iron roof. A hundred times before, when the fruit was ripe in the orchards, we had thought of climbing down. But it was a twenty-foot drop from the roof to the ground and the gutter was too rusty to fasten sheets. So we had just let it go.

It was cold and we knew we wouldn’t stay out long. High above V Forest a veld fire cut a brilliant red X into the mountainside. Lukas said he wished we had cigarettes. We argued about which was north and which south. We looked for north in the stars and said that was where Dominic was now, somewhere in Europe. Lukas and I showed the others how to read the Southern Cross to find true south. We whispered, aware that the school was just falling asleep, careful not to let our movements be heard on the roof. We spoke of exploring the cosmos. Maybe one day someone from Earth would live on the moon or Mars or Jupiter. There couldn’t be life in any form on other planets because the Bible said so. I wondered what Dom would have said to that if he were there. Bennie wanted to become an astronaut. For a while we sat arguing about which Apollo had landed on the moon. Bennie was the only one who was certain it had been Apollo II, citing the collection of silver coins commemorating America’s space programme that he had garnered from Mobil petrol stations. It was quiet; just the river, no dogs barking,the fire too distant to carry its crackles to us. We too had gone silent. We went back up the roof. As we entered the dorm through the window, we started pushing each other around quietly, falling on top of each other. Wordless. We pulled down our pyjama pants and took turns to stick our penises into the cleavage of each others’ buttocks. Not penetrating, just rubbing. I became aware that Almeida had withdrawn, had gone back to Dominic’s bed. While I rubbed against Lukas who lay face down below me, I watched Almeida in the glow of the moon. He lay silently, his back to us. In a whisper I asked why he wasn’t joining in, and he whispered back that it was against the Catholic Church. Lukas snorted into the pillow and we carried on, then changed partners and positions. It could have carried on for no longer than maybe ten minutes, nothing more. Just playing. When we were all back in our beds, Lukas announced that I was the best, because I had an okkerneut-piel. But Mervyn is also circumcised I said. Lukas said Mervy’s was too big and too red. Like an ostrich cock. We laughed and Mervy told Lukas to get lost with his willy the size of a pinky and how did he know it was red in the dark unless Lukas had been eyeing it in the showers? Our laughter echoed down the stairs and Almeida said we should quiet down before Uncle Charlie heard the noise. Then we joked with Almeida for being too chicken to do it or have it done to him. He didn’t respond. I felt something like disappointment — though that concept denotes something too strong — at his resistance to joining us; partly because it broke the unity of our group, partly, and only very, very far in the recesses of my mind, because I wanted to touch Almeida, his dark skin, his curly black head, the ears like brown shells, the small penis in the dense tuft of hair; the chest like marble. I said nothing of this. Instead, said I thought Mervy’s was the best because it was as big as a stallion’s. We giggled and guffawed some more and then slowly went quiet. As they drifted to sleep around me, I heard the squeaking of Lukas’s bedsprings. Knew what he was doing: wanking, tossing off. Was he able to come yet? As he said that day ontheir farm?
Masturbation
as the dictionary had beneath
mastodon
:
The stimulation or manipulation of one’s own genitals
,
esp. to orgasm; the stimulation, by manual or other means exclusive of coitus, of another’s genitals.
And then, to
coitus: sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, a coming together, uniting,
and below that,
coitus interruptus: coitus that is intentionally interrupted by withdrawal before ejaculation of semen into the vagina.
From Lukas’s bed came the increase in speed, the loud breathing, the rattling of the bed. Then the quiet.

A grey heavy sky.

Bok’s Land Rover in the driveway. He was home early. I had taken Simba along to Camelot in the paddock. Lena and Bernice were down on the beach with the Pierces. Leaving Simba outside I went in through the kitchen. House dark and hulled in quiet. I heard something in their bedroom. I walked down the passage. Their door was open.