Embrace (77 page)

I stare at the blue against my fingertips. It has stained right into the grooves where I bite the skins around the nails. There it is a dark ultramarine, a lighter cobalt blue the farther it goes from the nails until the skin is again flesh colour against the dirty leather of the reins and the copper of Rufus’s coat, the thatch of his mane. These blue fingers against the bridle and the red or copper coat, I think, that’s something I should draw.

Choir time Lukas now spends down at the dairy with or in place of Mr Walshe. In the evenings before supper he supervises the milking and the horses. In two weeks’ time he wants to shoe the horses andthere’s a Jersey cow about to calf. He says he’ll monitor her closely and let me know so that I can be present for the birth.

I ask what he thinks the matter with Ma’am. He pats King’s neck, glances at the Juniors behind us and says it’s obviously Graham’s death. ‘But what about the way she treats Dom?’ I ask. ‘She’s always curt with him, cutting him off. He’s always been one of her favourites.’

‘He’s a bit brass-arsed lately, that’s what’s gotten to Ma’am.’

‘He says she’s not the first nor the last mother to lose a child. He says you just have to go to every black location to see the grief; hundreds of mothers mourn for fourteen-year-olds, killed by the police.’ ‘Those kaffirs are burning down the country. I feel fuck-all for their mothers. Graham was trying to
protect
this country. Ag, anyway, who knows, I haven’t noticed anything.’

‘You wouldn’t notice if the school burnt down now, Lukas. What a life. The only thing you see is what’s going on in the dairy, hey!’ ‘Don’t be so sure of yourself, De Man.’

‘I envy you not having to sing anymore,’ I say automatically, then realise I don’t mean what I’ve just said. Every moment of choir has become a treat, each session something to look forward to.

‘That’s what a man gets for having such big balls,’ he says, turning on a gruff voice.

‘Kak, Lukas! Yours are no bigger than mine.’ And I go on to ensure him that according to my knowledge the break in a voice has nothing to do with the size of testicles.

‘Why do you think the castrati had such high falsettos?’ he asks, tipping his riding cap at me.

‘They had no balls, they were castrated! Still doesn’t prove anything about ball size. Mervy s balls are like goose eggs and he was a high alto. And what about Johan Rademan! Fifteen years old, dick like a hosepipe and balls down to his knees and he goes even higher than Dom.’

With Dominic now all but sleeping behind the piano, Mervyn, without my asking, buys my weekly tm of Condensed Milk. Mr Buthelezi punches in two gaps and I walk from the store, sucking from the slits. Mervyn takes a sip and says he cannot understand how I drink the stuff. I say Dominic says it’s because I’m a sweet and sentimental fella.

Past the game pen, where I mimic the zebra, getting them to look at us with ears erect, we walk from the holiday park towards the river and the rugby field. I tell him about Mkuzi, about the rhino cow and calf, the herd of buffalo we saw wading in the mud of the White Umfolozi. The purple-crested lourie, gliding downhill and disappearing in the bushes, its purple head resplendent in the sun, its wings spread out like fans. That Chaka wore the crimson feathers in his head-dress, alongside the feather of a blue crane.

On the embankment above the pump-house, arum lilies grow in clumps of thirty, forty flowers, the enormous creamy spathes with yellow stamens a natural garden in the wet soil. Into the marsh we plod, pulling the long stalks from their waxy green bases. Half the stalks we’ll cut off. Place the bunch on Ma’am’s desk. On a piece of cardboard I have sketched in charcoal and then coloured with pastels the blue fingers, the brown reins in black and burnt umber and then Rufus’s mane Venetian red faintly glossed with again raw umber. On it I wrote, inanely: Welcome back, Ma’am. Then I got the whole class to sign. I tried to compose a verse, just a haiku or a couplet, but nothing has wanted to come. For days now I have been unable to write a word. That I’m
ready to fly
seems to have had only the opposite affect: I’m not ready to write a word, let alone fly with the word. I keep at Dominic’s orange poem, finding new words in the encyclopaedias. There’s an essay due in a week’s time, titled: ‘A Remarkable Vision. I toy with the sight of the White Umfolozi from our front lawn, or the movement of animals at Bube. Or the dream. God, the dream I had in Umfolozi, with all the colours, and Jacques! I know it could be interesting, but I couldn’t possibly write that for her. That quote she has given me, seems, if I understand it correctly, to suggest that Ishould write about the dream. Yes, the dream, surely, is my inner-most idiosyncrasy? A few times I try, but give up, knowing it is scandalous. I could never give it to anyone to read, let alone Ma’am. So I have begun working on another dream, one I fabricate, of a man trying to cross a river, trying to achieve a state of perfection. The card, together with the flowers, will go to Ma’am. I was thinking about using a small watercolour I did last term, called
Poplars in Spring,
but have let go of the idea because of her comments about me having to find my own style. Bennie comes walking up from the rugby field with Radys and a group of Standard Sevens. He sees us and runs through the long grass to join us. Soon, our arms are filled with flowers. The three of us make our way back up the hill, occasionally stopping to shake ants and bugs out of the deep open spathes that look like white rhino ears or ice-cream cones with an orange waver straw in the middle.

I sit at a desk in the music room while Dominic’s head is bent over the keyboard. There is growing resentment from many in class about his blase attitude towards the cancelled tour. Increasingly I see friends going silent when he’s near. Bennie, who has become more and more friendly with Radys Dietz, refuses to play a game of tact, making sure all note the way he leaves any group at Dominic’s approach. Dominic himself either is or pretends to be indifferent.

Parents’ Weekend is three weeks away and I’m yet to ask about spending it with the Websters. On the phone I have lied to Bokkie and said Lukas has invited me to join his family at Cathkin Peak Hotel. Nor have I told anyone that I will not be back next year, that I’m going to Port Natal. I plan on writing a letter to Aunt Lena, asking her whether she might be able to pay for me to stay. If that works, any announcement on my part would have been premature. To tell Dominic or Lukas — or anyone — that Bok doesn’t have the money to keep me here or even to drive up for the last parent weekend is unthinkable. To tell him that Mumdeman is ill would be a lie of commission. Lies of omission are something else. Those I indulge in, alsoto Dominic, with little more effort than it takes to sneeze. Then, also, in my minds shadows hovers the treasonous possibility of not spending time with the Websters at all. Of instead getting Jacques to take me on a hike into the mountains. If I were to tell Jacques that my parents couldn’t come — because were so poor — he may take pity on me. Allow me to come to his room as often as I wish. No. I can do without his pathetic charity. And now, for the first time I feel a tinge of guilt. Not towards Jacques, but towards Dominic. Clearly I am keeping my options open, and that, maybe, is the worst reason I’m not asking him about the weekend. That flicker of hope and thudding desire, that maybe the thing with Jacques is not, after all, quite over. I cannot understand the recurring need to be with him. At home and in the bush I barely thought of him. But setting eyes on him, finding him still ignoring me, has fuelled my love; my lust. No. I want him to want to be with me. To want me. How I’d enjoy saying: no, I’m sorry, Mr Queer, I’ve tired of you and I love someone else. Or, better yet, to take the key and place it on the piano in front of him, letting him see I’m through with waiting for him. I could do that, for I still have the extra one cut in Toti. But even as I think these thoughts I already know there will be no following through into action. I miss being with him too much. Yearn. Even once more, even just one more time starfishing! Yet, I also treasure the moments with Dominic. Wish we could be alone, that his exams are over so that we can again lie in each other’s arms and talk and kiss and play and tease. I love them both. I want them both. I cannot possibly choose. At night, disallowed from visiting either and sure that Uncle Klaas and the Silent One have left, I stay in my own bed. I masturbate, sometimes twice, three times in the space of two hours. My fantasy is often one of penetrating Steven Almeida. Then I alternate between doing it and being done by Jacques, and when I receive a letter from Alette, it is her I hear saying yes, yes, oh god, yes, as I suck on her lips and run my tongue to her belly button. Occasionally I am sucking Harding’s dick or Reyneke is licking my starfish, groaning that he wants me to stick my dick into him. I imagine Marguerite Almeida, her long hair loose on a white pillow and her brown breasts hard in my mouth, her vagina tight and hot around my penis. I can think myself into kissing or stroking anyone or anything. I picture Cassandra’s dripping cunt, my one hand guiding King’s sausage into her or me, on a small hill, with King’s dick gliding in and out of me, his come flying over my back. Or of Dominic, sitting on top of me, his rectum opening and contracting like an anemone around my middle finger, his hands flat on my chest, his head thrown back, groaning like the night in their house. These are fantasies I can never discuss with anyone. During breaks we talk about tossing off, compare boasts on who takes the longest, who can ejaculate the quickest. Who has fucked a girl. But each image that comes to me so easily makes me feel ashamed and guilty. They confirm that I am a child of Satan. I can fantasize about Harding, of him lying beneath me, and I can wonder where in the world he is this year, and then the moment I have ejaculated can hate myself for wanting to have had sex with him. A fantasy is as good as a sin. And my sins are unutterable. I am as good as standing in hell. But a fantasy is not reality! I could never be fucked by King. He’d rip me apart. It’s just something to imagine and enjoy. No. That’s already a sin. There is no hope for my salvation. Wiping my belly I am ready to grab the Bible from my locker, read by torch under the covers. When I was with Dominic or Jacques, when fear had spread its ugly thorns in my mind, I told myself that at least hell would not be so bad with either of them there with me. Or I’d simply think of something else, like the bush, of wild animals, or of my life as an artist. But alone I have the fear of Dademan or Uncle Gert having access to my perverted mind, or Great-Grandfather and Grandmother Liebenberg. That they’re there, in the dorm with me, watching as guardian angels; horrified at the scenes playing out in the mind of their grandson and great-grandson.

His fingers or his back tired, Dominic takes a break. We talk about everything. Especially the Grade Eight and how afraid he is. There are those who say he’s way too young to play the Schumann and they’re probably just waiting for him to make one mistake. Of Schumann or Dom’s ability to play the German’s music I have no clue; but I tell him it sounds breathtaking, faultless, perfect. Words I think not only apt, but words that may boost his confidence. Whether he is truly good enough or even almost good enough to play the Schumann I don’t know, though Mervyn tells me he is. Mervyn tells me Dominic is world-class. And amongst all the talk of and rehearsing there is Ma’am’s strangeness towards him, which he says he’s sure is a passing thing. He tells me of his holiday, boating on the Vaal Dam where Dr Webster taught him to water-ski and they worried all the time about him breaking an arm or a finger. Mine with Bok in Mkuzi and Umfolozi. ‘I never knew your father was a ranger,’ he said, surprised. While saying I was sure I had mentioned it often over the years — that of course he has known — I suddenly realise that the bush is something I rarely speak about outside of our family. Just as I never speak about Tanzania. As much as they are constantly on my mind, I never speak about them. But because I think about them so often, I assume everyone knows.

Having sworn him to secrecy I have confided in him about Stephanie’s abortion. He said an abortion was nothing to be secretive or ashamed about. Mrs Webster has had three and she tells the whole world. He said she refuses to go on the pill because it muddles a womans hormones and every now and again she and Dr Webster have a little slip or the French letter tears and off she goes to London. He laughed, threw up his hands, and turned back to the keyboard, at once taking up where he had left off. As if he had just told me his mother went down the street to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken. His world, the Webster world, I think, is a world apart. No. A different galaxy from the one where I live.

‘Trying to catch up on Latin and Maths homework. Stuck in translation, unable to remember the gender of
sagitta, sagittae,
I lapse intodaydream. Staring at Dominic’s slender back beneath the black cotton fabric, the vertebrae of his spine visible with every movement of the flexing shoulder muscles, the white neck and short hair, head bowed forward nodding time, the fingers seem to run from his sides, again, like spiders crossing hot cement. Pulling a double page from the back of my Latin exercise book, I write:
Achilles Heel — Removing the Dampers.
Then begin to draw his heel and sandalled foot, tipped from the toes on the sustaining pedal. I go down on my haunches and study the hollows on either side of the tendon running down the back of his foot connecting to the heel, see the way the calf muscles tremble, ever so slightly with every suppression. He senses me behind him and still playing asks what I’m doing. Drawing your foot on the pedal, I answer. He tells me to kiss him in his neck. I say I can’t, not here, where there are no curtains and anyone can walk in. I scold him jokingly for banning me from his bed. He stops playing, swings around and kisses me, biting my lip when I try to pull away. I taste blood in my mouth.

More and more he speaks about Canada. Dr Webster is beginning to sound serious about emigrating. Please don’t go, I say. He says I can come and live in Toronto with them after I’ve finished school in Durban. You can become an exchange student, he says. You can apply to Rotary or to be an AFS. What is an AFS, I ask. American Field Scholar, he says, my cousin was an AFS. Easy as pie. And then, he says, you can stay on afterwards, Karl, yes, we can put up house together in New York or LA or Montreal. And we can learn to speak French.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soiri
I don’t want to live somewhere else, I say. This is my home. I only want to see other places, not live there. I do not say I know what happens to people who leave their countries of birth.