Embrace (70 page)

While Bokkie spoke, steering the car with both hands on the wheel, gearing down around each bend, I briefly entertained the thought of asking about Uncle Klaas, whether there’d been any news of him. What if I told her that he was back there, just behind us? Or if I were to tell her that she should turn the car around because there was someone down at the drift who wanted to see her.

‘Will you and he be here when I come back, Uncle Klaas?’ For two weeks — since the night of the dagga — I hadn’t been down to them. Only their day smell in the fort told me they were still there. Then, the night before Bokkie came, I went. To my question of whether theywere staying, Uncle Klaas grinned and said he didn’t know where they’d be. They move as the whim takes them. At once I had again found his vagueness — so deliberate — appalling. I had not come down there looking for more vagueness. Tell me something certain, give me some advice, I wanted to hiss. Why had I gone, looking for what? All I ever found there was aloofness, distance, the rhetoric of his madness. Nothing of the intimacy I needed and simultaneously dreaded getting from the old tramp.

He again gave me some of their zol. I tried to blow smoke rings. Bok blowing smoke rings at Mkuzi, through which we tried to stick our fingers before they dissolved. After a while I felt calm and wonderful. This can be the zol, I thought, but still no hallucinations. I said a cheerful goodbye. He said goodbye, without sentiment, and for the first time the Silent One smiled at me: an enormous grin without more than three teeth in his top gums. I rinsed my mouth in the river. Broke poplar leaves in my palms and walked back across the rugby field as the lightning started and almost at once thunder rolled down from Cathkin Peak and resounded from hill to hill. I have indeed grown fond of him, I smiled to myself, slowing my gait as I began the climb, hoping then that the rain would catch me. I enjoy his company, he is clever, he has read more books than both sides of my family put together. Dostoyevsky, he says. You must read Dostoyevsky. And in Toti I had gone to the library and found
The Brothers Karamazov.
The old librarian, there since we first came to Toti, big-eyed and full of praise at how ‘mature your framework of reference has become, Karl’. Uncle Klaas is a genius: a fact that the madness cannot erase. But is he really mad? Yes. No. He seems to know who he is. I trust him. If they are gone when I come back, I wondered, will I continue to go down there in the midnight hours when sleep refuses to take me? Will Jacques ask for me to return this key? And so, for in case he does, I have had another cut in Toti. I’ll-cut-a-key-in-Toti, cut-a-key-in-toti, I hummed to myself and laughed out loud as I walked to the school, lingering along the way, waiting for the rain. I assured myself it wouldnot make a difference if Uncle Klaas and the Silent One were gone when I return. While much of the attraction for going to the fort at night will leave with them, I will still go, just for fun, and when I get back it will be warm enough to swim. Midnight swims. Maybe tell Dom and Lukas. Uncle Klaas seemed to me as I neared the school — despite everything the family had said over the years — normal, civilised and clever. As I got into the music-room window the first huge drops struck my head and the shoulders of my dressing gown. Past Jacques’s room, ignoring the urge to knock. I will not go begging to that man. I’ll ignore you, give you a taste of your own medicine. Bloody homosexual. Through the library, through C, towards F, then, instead of going to my bed, on a whim I slipped into G.

‘You’re wet and you smell of smoke, Karl,’ Dominic mumbled, still waking.

‘Shhh You’re dreaming,’ I whispered, and kissed him, taking in the musky smell of his breath, the mustiness of his sleepy skin. ‘I’m not Karl. You’re Butch and I’m Sundance.’

Bok amidst the sounds of doves in late morning. His eyes rove from the magic guarri to the patch of seedless
themeda
and young thorn trees where Mbanyana’s reed house once stood. The rifle is propped against his knee. What, I wonder, is going through his mind? A hundred thoughts of everything he did here. I am seeing him in his khaki uniform, the green epaulettes on his shoulders:
Natal Parks Board.
On Vonk’s back with Jonas beside him on Ganaganda. Jonas, holding me by the shoulders, his hand over my mouth as the black mamba rises in the footpath in front of me. On a whim I tell Bok the story: Jonas and I were returning from the Forest of Figs, alone, because Chaka and Suz always frightened the birds. I was in front of Jonas, walking across a short cut where there was no path. Suddenly the snake was up, right in front of me, its head above mine, its eyes seething. I tried to scream and turn but found myself stunned, unable to move. Within seconds the snake sank down and rippled away into the shrubbery. Istood stock still for what seemed an hour. Only then when I again tried to move did I realise I had not frozen: Jonas’s one hand was like a clamp around the back of my neck, the other over my mouth. And when he let me go I was shaking, weeping, clinging to his legs. He picked me up and carried me screaming half the way home, all the time patting my back with his open hands, soothing me with words tl didn’t understand, the tone of which meant I was safe. And then,’ I tell Bok who has turned around to face me, ‘when we were near here, and I was again walking next to him, I asked him not to tell you or Bokkie about the mamba.’

‘Why?’ Bok asks. ‘What a stupid thing to do. You could have both been killed.’

‘I was afraid I wouldn’t be allowed back down to the forest.’

‘You know he probably saved your life? That’s why he grabbed you. To silence you.’

‘I know.’We sit quietly. Bok says what a good kaffir Jonas was. One of the best game guards the Parks Board ever had.

, And there was another time,’ I say, now enjoying seeing Bok’s surprise, ‘in the krans beneath the office at Umfolozi. Lena and I were down there with Suz or Chaka, I can’t remember which.’

‘You weren’t supposed to be there, you know that.’

‘We never went back, Bok. But before that Lena and I even took Stephanie and James down there.’

‘What happened?’

‘We were playing under the overhang and then I saw Lena in front of me, like she’d turned to stone. I looked up and there, on the cliff above us, was a leopard, looking down on us. Lena grabbed the dog by the collar and just whispered, “Kom,” and we walked up the foot-path, both of us too afraid to look back, afraid of what was behind us, could be coming at our backs any moment. When we got to the road we ran home, with me already telling her from behind not to tell you and Bokkie, because I might be locked up in the yard for the rest of my life.’

Bok sits shaking his head, a smile around his lips. ‘The things you kids got up to. Damn right you would have been kept in the yard. What else?’ And I tell him that was all, the only times we were in danger, other than the time the eland chased us, but that he already knows about. And I say at least I never threw bees into a toilet where an old woman was relieving herself and Bok laughs and says that’s only because there are no more long drops around. He rises, lifts the rifle wordlessly, and still smiling inclines his head towards the road. I follow, slipping the tambotie seeds into my shorts pocket. I can plant these in Toti some time, see if they grow. Maybe Bokkie wants to try some in the church garden. And I must show them to Dom. I walk behind Bok to the van, following his swishing through the grass, neither of us looking back. Of my life, I realise, my father knows nothing. As little as I of his.

As we drive back to HQ to return the rifle, we register what’s around us, the impala — remember how we had to cull thousands — the nyala that Bok says have chased away the abundant bushbuck because they had to share from the same height of shrubs.

I wait in the van while he walks into HQ to return the rifle.

At the Loskop road Bokkie slowed down the car even further, slipped into second gear and carefully took a left turn towards the Therons’ farm to stop in and say a quick hello to Auntie Babs and Uncle Gerrie. I thought of Jacques. Told Bokkie about my knee, that it had healed perfectly. Pulled up the jeans leg and exhibited the scar. We wound our way along the slippery road through pine plantations and through fields of young mielies until reaching the sign ‘Rust en Vrede — Gerrie en Babsie Theron’. The mud still smacked against the car’s belly, down the oak lane leading up to the lawn and the house. The farmhouse was shaded by huge jacarandas now in full purple bloom. Wet blossoms popped as the tyres pressed them into the lawn. The magnolias and seringas too were covered in flowers. Monet, I think, would have found things there to paint. ‘Must have heard the car,’ Bokkie smiled and waved as Auntie Babs came out onto the veranda even before we’d parked the car.

‘Welkom, welkom julle,’ she called and announced that she had fresh scones and tea ready in the kitchen.

-Good rain, you’ve had, Babsie!’ Bokkie said. ‘Gerrie must be happy for the crops.’

‘It’s going to be a good season for mielies,’ Auntie Babs answered from the stoep. ‘Gerrie is just out now, checking on the tractors. They get stuck all the time with rain like this. I’ve sent a girl to go and say you’ve arrived. He wants to say hello. How are the roads from Winterton?’

‘Very slippery, but not as bad as I’ve seen it before. Ooh,
Herder,
but your garden is looking lovely, Babsie.’ Bokkie glowed as Auntie Babs offered us seats on the veranda.

‘It’s the rains, Katie. And you, Karl?
Mense
but you’ve grown tall! You’re going to be the size of your Great-Grandfather Mostert. He was the tallest man in East Africa, we always joked that he had Maasai in him.’

I smiled, uncomfortable, proud. Bokkie said that I was sure to be taller than Bok, who was six foot one. And Auntie Babs said she couldn’t keep up buying new clothes for her youngest children and thank goodness they stopped growing around eighteen when they went to university.

‘And how are things at school, Karl? Looking forward to the holiday, I’m sure?’

‘Ja, Auntie Babs, very much.’

And there’s the overseas trip. I saw Miss Roos in Estcourt last week and she says the International Choir is the best ever.’

One would hope so, with three hours a day in rehearsal. Hey, Karl?’ Bokkie said, before I could answer.

You and Ralph must be proud of him, Katie?’

Proud and waiting to see this term’s report!’

And next year it’s Standard Seven?’

‘Yes, Auntie Babs.’

‘How time flies! It seems only yesterday you were here for the audition.’

‘That’s three years ago, Auntie Babs.’

‘Frightening how time flies, hey, Babsie?’

Amazing. Are you staying next year?’

‘I think so, Auntie Babs.’

A maid came onto the veranda bearing a tray with four china tea cups, a white teapot covered in a down cosy. On the one side of the tray was a silver plate filled with scones and a small glass container of strawberry jam, another of fluffy cream. I watched Auntie Babs — sophistication, grace and patience, my mother’s self-confessed ideal woman — as she poured tea for us and asked us to help ourselves to the scones.

Their talk centred around their children. Auntie Babs’s two sons and two daughters. One already at university in Bloemfontein, the pretty daughters, all planning to go there. Bernice’s plans for next year with SAA — she loves working with people, Babsie, you know. Lena’s sport, she wants to go to the Military Academy at George. And about what’s happening to whom of the old guard from East Africa. Bokkie, about Mumdeman, retiring from the Parks Board and might marry a rich Englishman — a Mr Shaw — and about Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain. Stephanie who’s overseas and James. Sanna Koerant, so Auntie Babs said and Bokkie confirmed she’d heard, has not recovered from the terrible stroke in June and no one knows how long she’ll live — looks like she’s got Parkinson’s disease. Shakes and trembles and sputters that the end is nigh. ‘You know what I mean, Katie, still the old Oljorro Sanna?’

‘Santa Sana!’ And we all laughed.

‘Same old skinnerbek until she breathes her last breath.’

And I thought of Mumdeman once when I was nine, when I told her how Bokkie wept when Bok stayed out drinking with tourists; Mumdeman told me to never
shit my own nest,
like Sanna Koerant:‘Always telling everyone what was going on in her bedroom and in her life. Every fight, every disagreement, every little detail of her life.’ Ouma said, ‘Everyone in East Africa from Mombasa to Nairobi knew what was going on in Sanna Koerant’s life. Now that’s shitting your own nest, Karl. What goes on in your own bedroom is private. That’s why we call those things private parts. Never shit your own nest.’

‘Yes, Ouma.’ But now I wonder if they are so private why is everyone so concerned about them. Why were we beaten for what we did with our private parts if they’re so private? Why did Mathison ask me to report to him about other boys if those are private parts? Why were Harding and Reyneke so afraid of me telling, if those are private parts? Why must I sneak to Dominic and Jacques at night? Why does Dominee Steytler preach Sunday after Sunday about the sins of the flesh? No, they’re not private, Ouma, as much as we keep them covered, our-private parts are more public then our faces. Our private parts are the most public parts of our bodies.

And I tried not to hear Bokkie as she told Auntie Babs all was going well with Bok’s business. Tried to block out the overconfident tone in which the complicated rationale for him now thinking of going into insurance was presented. While they spoke, I savoured my scone, each bite from the fork, my eyes in every bed and tree of the incredible garden. Everything was dripping, leaves dripping, branches dripping, the roof dripping: tick, tick, blob, blup, tock, bip, bip, ts, ts, ts, tick, blop, blop-blop, tick, tsss from rain gutters: watertunes as the sun again wanted to break through and shine. Cups of white magnolia drooped after the rain, as did the roses, heavy and overturned with drops perched like balls of quicksilver on the petals. Seringas’ scent clung to every breath. Dahlias too, shy, their heads bent down, away from last night’s showers. Azalias and rhodedendrums, all bright but spent. Part of Aunt Babsie’s garden’s beauty was that it seemed to go on forever, even though I knew from Parents’ Weekends that it ended after about an acre, against the cultivated fields of mielies andkaffircorn. The sun broke through the dark clouds. At once bright shafts of light fell against the mountains from which the mist was lifting. Then, for a minute a few drops again fell from the sky — drowning the drip-drip — even as the sun broke more cloud. Jackal marries wolf’s wife. The lawn was like wet green lucerne and purple velvet where the jacaranda blossoms had been knocked by the torrent. The sun shone, the clouds dissipated, and within no more than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, eat both halves of a scone, the garden’s tempo of dripping had changed to something slower, quieter, as if pausing; waiting for the bluster of birds and beetles, the breath of bees and butterflies. The mist had lifted from the mountains and I was struck by how the shapes of Champagne Castle and Cathedral Peak had altered from the angle at which I was seated. The two mountains, together, no longer looked like one flat bastion of rock. From the Therons’ stoep they were separate from the surroundings and from each other. From there they were all merely parts of the Drakensberg’s sandstone range, blended in as if they had no life or form of their own. From there Cathkin Peak was nothing like the rectangular mammoth it was from the school, a mere ten kilometres up the road. It is the angle, I decide. The shape of a mountain is determined by the angle from which it is viewed. It has no shape of its own. Like Table Mountain too. From Paarl, at a distance, it is completely different from when you’re standing below it, say at the Cape Town City Hall or on The Parade facing its ragged cliffs. Or from up there, when you’re seeing Cape Point, False Bay and the Hottentot Hollands Mountains and the blues of ocean and the blues of sky become the world’s most spectacular dome. And how different again it all was from behind, at Muizenberg, and how must it not look from Robben Island? Changing, changing, all the time. A million different views. Quite remarkable.