Embrace (43 page)

Another night under a shared mosquito net. We woke with a start from a knock on our locked bedroom door. Lukas called that we should come down to the jetty for snorkelling before breakfast. We slid into our black Speedos, took beach towels from a rack and went into the passage. Mrs Olver offered us a glass of orange juice after which we ran to the jetty. I wondered what Lukas had thought of the locked door. Banished the thought. The sun was already hot, even though it was not yet eight in the morning. By the time we got to the boathouse, the other four were already there, rummaging through the wide assortment of goggles, snorkels and flippers. We tried going over backwards into the water from the jetty — as we’d seen divers do in James Bond’s
Thunderball
 — but came out sputtering and forced to readjust goggles and remove water from snorkels.

Underwater plants, submerged boulders, and the movement of fish — orange, yellow, blue. The six of us drifted together, faces down, looking from side to side. I could hear the sound of my own breathing. From above the sun beat down on our backs, below me lay a new universe. Occasionally one of us would dive down and point at something, a plant, a crab scurrying across a sandy patch, a school of hundreds of tiny silver fish. My mind drifted. I thought of Ma’am; having Dom beside me in bed; Almeida snorkelling next to me; underwater plants green and brown, fish darting, no waterlilies, the colour purple, pink, Ma’am, landscapes, fishes, tails, fins like angels. I brought my head up and saw Dominic’s head submerged, his flippers moving lightly, his arms behind his back, snorkel turning from side to side, and I saw the skinny back, the shoulder blades rising above the surface, my eyes darted to Almeida, his arms drifting beside him, his bony shoulder blades visible too, like islands around which water swished; Lukas, his hands held behind his back like Dominic’s . .. Dademan where I had wings like an angel, voices like angels those two, no Bok’s voice saying voices like angels turning into a screaming incantation in my head,
voices like angels, voices like angels.

I swallowed water and choked. I swam, sputtering, to the jetty and hoisted myself up onto the wooden walkway. I was shivering. If I had a gun, Jesus gun, Bok, Mathison, Buys, Cilliers, Taylor; if I had a gun and you came near me I’d shoot you. Not in the heart. In the face. One at a time. Execution style in the mouth. Blow your brains to splatter against the white wall. The rage of shivers could not have lasted for more then fifteen seconds, but my head was throbbing and I couldn’t go back in the water. I stood up and felt dizzy, saw stars like fireflies between me and the lake. I tugged goggles from eyes, held them. Sank down on haunches. I wanted to weep, but there were no tears. More than crying, I wanted to kill: voices like angels; voices like angels, voices like angels it ran through my head even as I kept my eyes on the five backs, the ten shoulder blades, floating farther away from me.

It must have been in the second week of visits to Dr Taylor. One evening at dinner, Bok, in a brief aside: ‘Dr Taylor says he was late for his appointment with two Berg boys, two brothers, and when he got out of the lift he immediately heard singing from down the corridor. As he came around the passage corner, he saw a small crowd of people gathered outside his reception area to listen.’ Bok chuckled and said the brothers had broken into song while they waited for Dr Taylor. All the secretaries from down the hallway had come out to hear who was singing. ‘Dr Taylor says they had voices like angels. He had to ask the secretaries to leave so that he could get on with his session.’

I had not thought of it since July. When Bok told the story all I had taken from it was a vague sense of thrill at belonging in the company of boys with voices like angels. Now, suddenly, a new set of meanings had clawed and scratched their way through my brain: Who were the brothers? It could not be the Stuarts, because they lived in East London. It had to have been before my time. And I didn’t care who they were. What was important was that I had not been the first nor the only one who had gone through Taylor’s office or his POA. Moreover, I was not the first or only one to go through there from that school. Within seconds a huge puzzle was slipping its pieces into place where I had hitherto not imagined spaces to exist. Nor had cared to think of it as such: Taylor knew about that stupid play, even though I had never told Bok or Bokkie about it. The school had. Of course. And what had Bok known? How had he known to take me to Taylor and not to some other shrink? And how was it possible that I had been taken to Taylor for treatment a mere four weeks after the caning from Buys? Mathison had told Bok. Bok had known all along. That day at the pool, that day he asked me whether I ever did ‘It’. By then Bok had already known. This was the rule! Not the exception Mathison had made it out to be. There was the incident with Harding and Reyneke’s gang just two months before Malawi. And Harding on the train! Idiot, idiot I am. If ours was an isolated case, why would Mathison have asked me in July to report if I heard about such things? And, of course, how did Mathison know about Reyneke and Harding if he didn’t have other spies running around? But these were splinters of the bigger hatred that held me spellbound. Foremost in my mind was the knowledge that my father had known, that day at the pool, he had known that I was lying to him. How could you, Bok, bastard, sit there and watch me lying to you, not stop me, not tell me that you already knew — even before you came to sit at that swimming pool? As though pretending that your not knowing made it to not be true. And Bokkie, she also knew, for why was there no question or explanation offered about why I was seeing Taylor? You useless, useless mother. Deaf mute bitch. Oh your deafness is nothing; but your refusal to speak! And the others? Were they — Mervy, Lukas, Bennie — were they also taken to Dr Taylors in their home towns? And none of us is speaking. All of us, co-conspirators in the school’s maze of intricate deceit, betrayal and silence.

My stomach heaved. A measly yellow string of bitterness burnt up my throat and slopped into the lake. Wiped away tears. My mouth. Felt the headache gone.

Bastards. Bastards. Bastards. If I can kill you, Buys, Bok, Mathison, Cilliers, I will. I will destroy you. Bit by bit. Word for word take you apart. Through torture. I will find a way. And that school, that grand place of private learning: brick by brick by brick. I will blow the horn, long, intensely at the most sensational pitch. In a concert of my delights, your walls will crumble while only your whores survive as heroes. Your foundations will be exhumed so that your savage song is permanently played for the nation. No, not to that dumb country alone: to the world. Some day, I will chop you all up and feed you to the vultures and the marabous and invite seven continents to witness. To participate in the fest. No, I will not kill you! Live to the hyenas! Like Chaka! Yes, like he did to that old bitch who had done him harm when he was Nandi’s child, only a young boy. Whomever that old hag was, I’ll get you like Chaka got her. Like nothing more than an oldblack kaffir girl imprisoned in a hut, you will feel your own arms tear off, beg me for clemency denied, cry out in pain when hearing your own bones crunch in the foullest of the nights jaws.

Tiny fish had risen to hover beneath the jetty. In the shade of my reflection they opened and closed their little lips around the contents of my guts that wobbled away like curdled yellow milk on the lake’s mirroring surface.

Mumdeman was transferred from Charters Creek to Midmar Dam where she would run Thurlough House for Parks Board VIPs. For Christmas at Midmar, but, mostly, because it was Mumdeman’s first in thirty-five years without Dademan, the whole De Man and Liebenberg families converged on the old colonial farmhouse. It was less a house than a mansion that stood on green lawns that to me were as vast as rugby fields surrounded by century-old oak and pear trees. Paddocks where once horses and cows must have grazed separated the gardens from the dam. Here we kids went fishing for blue-gill, bass and, if we were lucky, eels. Across the dam you could see the small game reserve and, on clear days, rhino and eland browsing.

Bok, Bokkie, me, Lena and Bernice; Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain, Stephanie and James and Mumdeman from that side of the family; then, from the Klerksdorp side, Ouma and Oupa Liebenberg; Aunt Lena with her wealthy fiance Uncle Joe Mackenzie; Tannie Barbara with Kaspaas and Lynette; my mother’s cousin Coen and his girlfriend Mandy who got angry when we called them Uncle and Auntie. Then Aunt Siobhain’s brother and his wife had come out from England where they now lived after leaving Dingle in Ireland. Their surname was Heany and they joined us after taking a trip to the Kruger National Park and the Drakensberg resorts. Then there was Ouma’s oldest and dearest friend, Sanna Koerant, the greatest gossip of East Africa, down from the old aged home in Benoni. Sanna Koerant had become a legend in her own lifetime, her name popping up in every discussion where East Africans gathered. Bokkie and Mumdeman warned us not to say anything in front of Sanna, for, before you knew it, the entire country would know every intimate detail of a family’s private scandals.

The house, recently restored and refurbished, was imposing: thick walls built from granite chiselled into blocks, a veranda along its front and back; a dull red corrugated iron roof, stacks of bedrooms, two vast lounges and a dining room with a table around which we could all fit. The year’s loss of Dademan and Uncle Gert, evident in whispers and hidden tears, did little to dampen the festivities: braais, boat rides on the dam, Bok and Uncle Michael water-skiing, bonfires at night, walks through the forests, drives to the game reserve, storytelling, music and dancing. The Thurlough House maids were off for Christmas, so we children and the women took turns washing up after meals and packing away the new Parks Board crockery.

It was the first time all of us had been together. Mumdeman said we were like the Royal Family in such a smart house. Sanna Koerant said more like right royal Makoppolanders let loose in Buckingham Palace.

Bernice and Stephanie listened to all kinds of new music and Stephanie taught us a dance that was just coming in: the go-go. Bokkie muttered that the music and the go-go had her worried about Satanism and drugs. Pop music leading to drugs leading to Satanism ) leading to communism, she’d heard it over Springbok Radio. Aunt Lena laughed and said Bokkie was one big walking double standard: ‘Remember how you used to piss your pants when you heard Elvis on the radio?’ We giggled and Bokkie said she’d appreciate it if Aunt Lena would use proper language in front of us children. Stephanie taught me to sing ‘Jamaica Farewell’ and she let me listen to a new Seven Single. It was Joni Mitchell. We sang ‘Clouds’, over and over till I knew all the words and sang it my every waking moment. Bok threatened to beat me if he heard
bows and flows and moons and Junes and tears and fears
once more from my lips. We saw one of Oupa Liebenberg’s balls hanging out of his blue swimsuit and Lynette whispered that it looked like a huge swollen raisin and I said it was more like a shrivelled guava. James got a fishhook stuck in his toe and had to be taken to Howick to have it excised under anaesthetic.

On Christmas eve afternoon, Uncle Joe, Aunt Lena and Coen and Mandy took us kids to a funfair at the tourist camp on the other side of the lake. Uncle Joe paid for everything and we were allowed to eat as many toffee apples and ice-cream cones and candy floss as we wanted. The girls and I were delighted that our aunt was marrying such a rich man. To us it spelt privilege through matrimony. After we’d gone on all the rides and it was time to return, we headed back to Uncle Joe’s metallic silver Mercedes-Benz. Even though Coen and Mandy were great, none of us wanted to go in Coen’s goggo-mobiel and I planned to make a dash for the Benz the moment we got close. We passed through a grove of wattles with Uncle Joe and Aunt Lena walking hand in hand in front of us. Campers and other visitors were streaming past us in the other direction. Aunt Lena suddenly swung around. For a second we didn’t know what had happened. Then we saw that a wattle twig had ripped off her wig. We kids cracked up, as did some of the tourists, but Uncle Joe walked on as if he didn’t know her. Aunt Lena reached up and quickly slipped the wig back onto her head. Colour had drained from her face and she didn’t speak all the way home.

That night the table was set with candles and food for Africa. James and Stephanie had arranged flowers in the middle. As we were about to sit down for dinner, Aunt Lena fell down onto the diningroom floor, arms like windmills and unearthly noises gargled from her throat. We were told to stand back because she was having an epileptic fit. Bokkie and Ouma Liebenberg went with her to her room and stayed away for the duration of the meal. Again Uncle Joe made as though nothing had happened. I was asked to say grace and I prayedthat Aunt ‘Lena would not be the third death of the year. Everyone looked uncomfortable when I’d finished. Sitting at the children’s end of the table Lena said I should be less worried about the third death than about the third mad gene. Away from St Lucia there were, as far as I was concerned, no trade-offs in silence and I went to Bok and reported Lena for saying I was carrying the mad gene. After dinner Bok gave Lena a hiding and, as her screams ran through the big house, I instantly regretted having told on her. Bok brought her to apologise. He left us to make up.

Kneeling at my bed that night with all the cousins and Bokkie beside us, I prayed again that Aunt Lena would not be the third death in the cycle. Bokkie interrupted my prayer: ‘What do you mean, the third death?’

‘Death and accidents come in threes,’ I said, still kneeling. Bokkie smacked me on the back and asked how I could include a heathen superstition in the middle of a prayer to Jesus who had died for our sins precisely so we would be freed of all idolatry and place all our faith in Him. She told me to get into bed and, instead of praying to my loving Heavenly Father on the eve of His birthday, to lie there and think about whether Satan’s embrace and the furnaces of hell was actually where I was heading.