Embrace (9 page)

‘Shut up, you Jewish bitch,’ he retorted; and my mother was pushed so that she stumbled from the path into the long grass.

Into the gas-chamber at gunpoint; the metal door latched behind us; my mother grasped my father by the chest and wept: ‘This is our end, my husband! Oh, our poor son!’

Outside, the taps moan as the commissars turn on the gas: ‘Shhhh, shhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.’

Soon, no longer able to hold our breaths, we are coughing and sputtering. Increasingly cruel laughter permeates the chamber where we still attempt to huddle together. We paw at our own throats, clawing against the fire rushing into our lungs. The laughs turn to vicious howling as our family’s embrace unravels into flailing spasms of slow and dramatic death.

Then we change roles.

During the dry season, on an afternoon when there was spite from the sun veiling the world in a thousand gyrating aquarelles, Bok took me to a sandbank in the White Umfolozi to fire my first shot with a revolver. Dressed in only khaki shorts, he steered his Land Rover along the track with me and Bokkie on the front seat beside him while Chaka and Suz panted in the back. I may have chattered about the week past when he had been away in the bush darting white rhino to be transported to other reserves.

Bok pulled the vehicle deep beneath the branches of a fig, close to one of the few pools that retained its water even when the bush and veld had become a patchwork of browns and yellows as far asthe human eye could see. The previous time we were close to there, the river had been a churning torrent of muddy water dragging trees and animal carcasses along the angry route we had come to witness. Then Bok had just returned from trail with tourists after bang holed up for three days in the Ncoki caves, cut off from Mpila by the rains. From miles away we heard the roar. Bok, Bokkie, me, with Bernice and Lena back from boarding school, sat in the vehicle, agog at the volume, the movement, the speed that turned the spectacle before us to terror. Now it was an entirely different landscape we entered. At my request, Bok again told of an earlier flood — in the years we were still in Mkuzi — when two game rangers on an inflated tyre tube had seen a Zambezi shark this high up the river.

Bokkie wanted to be in the shade. Above us in the sycamore fig’s branches, hadidas had built a nest on a shaggy clump of flood debris. Cautioned by the dogs’ erect ears, we looked upstream. Figures as if caught in dancing mirrors, a herd of zebra and wildebeest stooped to drink from another pool in the distance. Bok said we’d have to wait. He didn’t want to scare off the game with shots. Bokkie spread a blanket for us to sit where she would soon lie down to read. She took from the canvas shoulder-bag a beer for her and Bok to share and a Tupperware bottle filled with red Kool-Aid for me.

I climbed the fig’s trunk. Sliding on my bum, I approached the nest. From below Bok told me to keep a reasonable distance, particularly if there were eggs or hatchlings.

The game slowly retreated from the pool. Bok said we could go. He instructed Chaka and Suz to stay and they found their resting places in the grass beside the blanket. With the revolver in his holster and an empty five-gallon jerry, we moved into the riverbed. In both hands I carried a small red and black box of ammunition. Behind us, Bokkie Settled down on her stomach, chin resting on a pillow, her Mills and Boon out before her.

Bok’s eyes scanned the riverbanks. Bokkie and the dogs under thefig disappeared behind us. We halted across from a rocky outcrop rising above the bank on the other side.

‘Can I take these out, Bok?’

‘In a minute, Philistine. I’m going to put up the target. Stay here.’

In the pattern of shade cast by dull-green reeds I waited, watching my father cross the white sand and place the can atop an almost round boulder on the opposite bank. I wished Bernice and Lena were there to see.

25 March 1976

Amanzimtoti

Home in Toti for Easter. Due to the June and July tour of the Transvaal and Cape I won’t be back here until the October holidays. How I’m looking forward to the Cape! Last year with the inauguration of the Afrikaans Language Monument we barely saw anything other than Paarl and Wellington. This time we’ll be there for two weeks. There is so much I want to see there: Table Mountain, Cape Point, the vineyards of Stellenbosch and, of course, Groot Constantia. In Art Ma’am has shown us the most wonderful copies of Pierneef lino-cuts, many of the white Cape Dutch architecture and thatched roofing, the oak trees, outside staircases and gorgeous gables. Dom says the Boland is a lot like the South of France.

Time has flown since my last diary entry. Cociloelloeliersoos has called me only once after that. My excitement and dread was shortlived as he only wanted to ask whether I was catching up in second soprano. Although, he did ruffle my hair (!) and gaze at me rather strangely before I left and he asked whether I was okay not standing right in front of him anymore. I told him I was doing very well, because I am. I’m actually enjoying choir. I told him he could ask

Erskin Louw who is just two down from me. I’m not the tallest in seconds as I was in firsts and now I’m no longer right in front of him and I’m two rows back. I’m now almost as tall as Lena! Bernice found two pimples — my sisters now call them zits — on my right temple last night while we were all watching
Haas Das se Nuuskas.
TV is lots of fun but Bokkie moans like a stuck record-player about Bernice and Lena spending their nights in the lounge instead of doing homework. The SABC is planning to screen the Montreal Olympic Games in July, so I do hope we’ll be staying with host families who at least have TV The moment
Haas Das se Nuuskas
was over Bernice pinned me down on the carpet for my first ever zit patrol! Behind my ears she found at least three blackheads. When she squeezed those it hurt like hell. ‘Use a pin!’ Bokkie shouted from the kitchen. ‘You’ll be scarred for the rest of your life! Why don’t you kids listen to me? Look at these scars on my face, do you want to end up looking like me?’ And Bernice shouted, ‘Yes, of course we want to look like you because you’re beautiful,’ and then she whispered, ‘even though you’re such a bloody moaner.’

Dominic phoned yesterday afternoon. I told him he has to call during the day because at night we spend family time together. There’s no use in angering Bok. Dom is allowed to phone as much as he likes and I’m a little worried he’ll call while Bok’s here.

I spoke to Aunt Lena, who says Klerksdorp has frost every night. She’s sure Great-Uncle Klaas and the other tramps are already heading for the coast. She says Uncle Joe’s affair with the bokititcoch Matilda isn’t bothering her anymore because she’s been Born-Again. I told her that Mathison might also be Born-Again and she said, ‘Praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus, that Karl is in the company of your disciples. Thank you, thank you, Jesus.’ Since she’s Born-Again she says she knows God is on her side and will stand by her into any further tribulations she and Uncle Joe must pray through to honour the promise they made on their wedding day: through sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer. She says she’s praying that Uncle Joe may lose all his millions, so that he may become like Job. God, she says, will never breakour backs with the burdens he places as blessings on our shoulders: he merely wants us to bend our knees. She is filled with the holy spirit Holy Spirit and says she’s so blessed that she may soon be speaking in tongues. I wonder whether Mathison speaks in tongues. That is something I’d love to hear. Maybe do it myself, though I cannot imagine the Holy Spirit coming near me at the moment. Not with everything Didomim and I are doing and my thoughts about C.

Afternoons I wait at Pahla station for Alette and Lena and we walk home together. On days when Lena stays at Port Natal for sport Alette is alone. Then we can talk about music and books. As usual Lena’s doing only sport and no school work and Bokkie has her hands in her hair. Bernice is working hard for matric and she says she wants a university exemption even though she’s planning on becoming an air hostess so that she can travel.

For the first time in ages I’ve had a reasonable report: As for English, Latin and Art. B’s for Natural Science, History, Geography and Afrikaans. Pass for Music Theory. E for Maths. Bok is popisoossoose-did off about the E and says I won’t ever find a job if I can’t do Maths.

Alette is doing Grade Five piano this year. On Sunday she played the organ in church because Juffrou Sang has the flu. I’m deeply in love with Alette.
Her and I
She and I speak about Europe often. We’ve traced our tour in Prof’s Atlas. When I’m with Alette I don’t even spare a thought for Didomim or Cociloelloeliersoos.

Bokkie’s back from slaving in the church garden. I’m off to say hello. Will write again in the Berg next week. Mumdeman has met an old widower whom she’s thinking of becoming engaged to. He has lots of money.

Quiet time felt an eternity. The words from the page found no place to take hold in the fever that had become my mind. I paged to Psalm 23. That I could recite by heart, moving my lips, while pretending to gloss the text. I repeated it in my head to the rhythm against my rib-cage. After lights-out, I waited to hear Uncle Charlie’s door shut in the passage between the dorms. I quietly rose as if for a quick visit to the bathroom. I snuck past the house-master’s chamber and glided into G where Dominic waited, listening to the radio through his headphones. I lowered myself onto his bed, my arm across his belly.

Aren’t you getting in?’ he whispered, removing the headphones. ‘No, I’m tired from riding. I’ll come tomorrow night, okay?’

‘Want to listen for a while?’

‘Just a bit.’

I stretched out, resting my cheek on the pillow beside him. He handed me one end of the earphones and took hold of my free hand. It was the ten o’clock news. I heard only the reader’s voice; of what he said I took in nothing. At the peep peep signalling the bulletin’s close, I lifted myself onto an elbow.

‘Okay. Sleep tight,’ I whispered against his ear.

‘Are you okay?’ he whispered back.

‘Ja, fine . . . why?’

‘I wanted you to stay.’

‘Tomorrow, okay? I’m already falling asleep.’

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday?’

‘We can make an exception, okay? Change the routine.’

I dropped my head and kissed him. ‘Loelovise yokou.’

‘Loelovise yokou titoo.’

I got up quietly and slipped back to my bed in F Dorm.

Listening to the fugue of breathing as around me boys began to sleep. Another variable came to mind and I prayed: dear Jesus, just
this once,
be on my side and let big Fat Du Toit not choose tonight for one of his muffled tossing-off sessions. And, if Dademan is somewhere in the ether, please let him not be here tonight to see where I’m going. I waited, anticipated the ritual of squeaking springs. Using hands and feet, I stuffed my blanket and pillow down between the sheets next to me. The squeaking didn’t happen.

Soon, hearing Du Toit’s light snores, I would rise and pull the covers taut over the dummy in my bed. Barefoot, I would cross the dormitory as if again towards the bathroom. Instead of entering where any wakeful eyes might suspect my figure from going, I will sneak through C Dorm where the Secondaries are already long asleep. I will slowly edge across the stairwell’s landing. I will peer around the balcony door to make sure no teachers or staff are downstairs in the auditorium. When assured — absolutely certain no one is moving about in that vacuous space — I will tiptoe through the library and past the Junior dorms.

The passage door will be unlocked as he had said it would.

I’m a big boy now, I’d think and smile a nervous smile to myself. Within weeks, I’d have my own key: an instrument granting liberty of night movement that would initially seem to cost little more than a weekly stop in his bedroom. But it was not freedom I was seeking. In my own turbulent mind, I imagined that mine was the premeditation of a playful revenge and a little adventure — though those alone would not be my dividends. What came before thoughts of freedom or even the attainment of goals, and what for me became my most special discovery, was that squirt tasted like salted almonds on my tongue and against my pallet, that it burnt, long afterwards, quite pleasantly at the top of the throat. Knowing it neither there where I waited, nor understanding it even as it unfolded around me through that winter when I’d have to wear slippers on the cold linoleum passage, I was about to take myself further into that intimate space that in our mountain school, could not but exist at the obscure intersections of love and betrayal.

Jonas and Boy live in huts. Jonas and Boy make things with wood and Jonas beats the drums. Jonas makes faces and masks that you can put over your face and little men and Tambotie tables Uncle Michael buys for 10 cents and he sells them for RI.00 in Durban and gives some to us but Jonas doesn’t know. Jonas says we can get rich from curios. Nkosasaan makes grass carpets and straw mats. She is Jonas’s girl and Jonas says she’s fat she’s going to have a piccanin. Nkosasaan lives in Ulundi. Boy is not married but he has babies. That’s a sin. Jonas and Boy carry guns like Bok. Because Bok must look after them when they’re scared of elephant in Ndumu. Because Jonas and Boy are kaffirs and kaffirs don’t know anything Bok must take care of them. Kaffirs are dangerous. Kaffirs are stupid. Thick like pap and their lips. They also stink because they never bath. Kaffirs are also niggers and wogs and houtkoppe and boys and coons and baboons and Afs and natives and Zulus and Muntus and Sothos and Xhosas and the piccaninnies hang rocks on their filafoois to make them long like black mambas. Bokkie doesn’t allow Jonas and Boy into the house they must wait outside. Me and Lena go to the hut and sit and drink magou with the boys and they teach me the drums and we sing with the drums and how to cut wood for masks and statues. I love Jonas best. Jonas is best on the drums. Jonas teaches me to sing ‘Ihashi igabane’. I love Boy too. Boy carries me on his shoulders and his hair is like Lossie’s feathers and he smells like fire and grass and if I fall asleep he carries me home. Boy is strong and looks after Bokkie when Bok’s away with Jonas on elephant patrols or chasing the poachers. When Bok’s away on Save the White Rhino then Boy sleeps with the gun outside the kitchen wall so we can call him if something happens. In the bush the kaffirs know their place. In town Uncle Michael says the Munts are getting restless like in Tanganyika.

Mr Walshe slipped his fingers into the spaces between stomachs and girths; adjusted bits and told some to sit up straight and not look like a sack of mielies. He passed over Lukas and me. The two of us were at the stables as often as the systems rotating roster allowed and Mr Walshe knew us well. Moreover, Lukas was his sometime assistant at the dairy. Occasionally, when Mr Walshe was away, Lukas had permission to supervise Junior rides.

The pages of our Bibles, the inside lids of our desks and our pencil cases were brought to life by photos of us on our favourite mounts. Alongside these were photos of girlfriends and pin-up girls cut from
Scope
magazine, which came once a week in the mail for Lukas. In his Bible, Lukas also kept an enlarged picture of Harlequin, his own retired racehorse. My favourite horse was Rufus. I rode him whenever I could, though till ‘75 the horse would frequently be taken by Reyneke or one of the other Seniors before I could get to the stables. Rufus was probably a boerperd of sorts, yet almost as fast as King, who was part Arab, part thoroughbred. Rufiiss copper coat glimmered even in winter’s molt and his mane and tail were the colour of bleached thatch. At my request, Lukas instructed the stable boys to refrain from cutting Rufus s mane. The boys respected Lukas both as Mr Walshe’s right-hand man and because of his fluent Xhosa. While most of the stable boys spoke Zulu, Lukas said they were none the less able to understand the language of the Eastern Cape and they seemed to take delight from their animated conversations with Lukas, transactions from which I was excluded. Knowing that at one point I had spoken at least broken Zulu to Jonas and Boy, I regretted not having learnt their language properly. Zulu could have been put to effective use with the stable boys.

Lukas alone was allowed to ride King, the farm’s strongest most wilful creature. As happy as I was on Rufus, I did envy Lukas the honour brought by his physical strength and prowess as an experienced equestrian.
I do equestrian sport.
Something I delighted, unashamedly, in saying. Home for the holidays it could drive Lena up the walls.

The regular riders constituted a fairly small group. Much of the school up on the terrace belonged to a world whose dwellers seldom ventured down to the parts whence Mr Walshe oversaw the farm’s activities. Dominic, for one, had not come riding more than four or five times. The same with Mervyn. Of course Dominic had to take care of his fingers for piano, and Mervy had violin, but still I suspected that even without those commitments neither of them would take much pleasure down there. To me, on the other hand, riding was the reason for being in the Berg. That and the tours. Our fort. And the landscape. And Dominic. When I thought of it, I imagined guiltily that I would sacrifice Dominic, the tours and the forts, but not the horses. Everything about riding, the movement from the horse into my body, the speed and rhythm as the ground coursed by, seeing the world from the elevation of the saddle, the smell. The smell of horse on my hands mingled with leather and dubbin. Prep was a battle as I tried to concentrate on homework while inhaling the odour from between my fingers. After riding I had to be cautious, for the smell of horse, just like that of rain on the dry earth, let something loose in me. I wanted to go wild. Become
boisterous,
a word I’d learnt from Miss Roos.

We walked the horses down, past the Dragon’s Ridge holiday resort and over Sterkspruit’s concrete bridge. Lukas was saying that the mare Cassandra would foal within eight weeks. I could not wait. Steven Almeida and I had been there the previous year, watching together, when Cassandra conceived by King. For a moment again Steven was back with us, quiet and unspeaking. Again I wondered what had become of him. I leant forward and patted Rufus’s neck. Somewhere in the mountains heavy rains had fallen, for the river was swollen and the bridge covered with a foot of swift-flowing water. Thick silver jets spurting from the pipes beneath the concrete crashed into the downstream pool. Wading across, the horses were allowed a brief drink. Once over the bridge, the gradual ascent began. Mr Walshe allowed us to canter as we passed beneath V Forest and took the road’s steep curve up the hill onto the grassy plateau. From here the ground rose gradually for another three kilometres before itclimbed again into the next layer of foothills and the base of the wide escarpment. At a nod that were allowed a short gallop, King, with Rufus on his tail, streaked ahead. A good while before the cliffs Mr Walshe whistled for us to rein in.

Where the road became a dead-end we dismounted and secured the horses to a dilapidated split-pole fence. Tied our riding caps to the stirrups.

Not everyone wished to go up the hill to the paintings. Most preferred to stay with the horses and talk to Mr Walshe. He sat with his back against a tree trunk, removed his bush hat and lit a Gunston Plain. Only Ron and Gerhand, two Standard Fives, followed Lukas and me along the short path up through the shrubbery.

‘Not past the front ones, Lukas,’ we heard from behind.

‘Of course, Mr Walshe.’The first overhangs, where the rock paintings could be seen, led to a narrow ledge, completely overgrown, behind which we knew were more overhangs. Somewhere back there, so one of the stable boys had told Lukas, was a real cave, or a series of caves. None of us had seen the cave and we never had enough time to bash through the bramble tangles, old yellow-woods and thick foliage that obscured the ledge where we thought the cave may be. Our party of four, with Lukas ahead, moved on to where the rock face was broken and rugged, overgrown with bramble and monkey ropes, before opening into shallow rock overhangs. Streaks of bright sunlight dappled through the shrubbery, illuminating the smooth walls. A smattering of ferns and moss dung to the rock; from somewhere a trickle of water made damp stains like maps down near the floor; we guessed at the source. Underfoot, sand, refined as white powder, was covered in spoor and droppings.

‘They look like raisins.’

‘Taste one, see if they taste the same.’ Our laughter running along the cliff.

‘This is klipspringer. Look at the spoor,’ I said, going down on haunches and pointing to the tiny imprint of deft tracks.

And dassie over here,’ Lukas said. Ron and Gerhard moved to the sand beneath the opposite wall to look at Lukas’s find. Ron said something about having read on the back of a Chappies paper that elephant are dassies’ closest relatives.

‘Durrrrr . . . Steve,’ I hissed inadvertently and the du, and the sss, and the tt returned.

‘Here’s the giraffe.’

They crossed over to me standing with my neck thrown back, face turned up to where the rock folded back to make the ceiling. They chatted while we stared at the fading yellow drawing of the long-neck with the dark markings. The legs were faded, like natural shades in the sandstone. How quiet I wanted it to be. Like in a museum or at a grave site. This, I thought, is sacred ground. I wanted the others to shut up; to hear nothing but silence and feel the spirit of the place. In another lifetime, before any of us were born or even before we’d arrived in Africa, people lived here, ate here, fought and mated — made love — here. The further back into the dusk, the brighter to my eyes seemed the red, yellow, brown and orange drawings. Most were of small stick figures on the hunt: bows and arrows at the ready to release at a young eland grazing to one side of the herd. Deeper we moved, towards the ledge’s tangled obstruction. There the drawings made up a dense montage of paintings over paintings of human activity around fires and scenes of the hunt, less visible as the sun was absorbed by the dark. Not a montage, I thought, no, I’m sure this is what Ma’am would call a palimpsest. A palimpsest of imagery. Now beside myself with excitement, I wanted only to go deeper along the ledge.

‘Wait,’ I said, ‘I’ll ask Walshe for his lighter so we can see better.’ I moved back to the entrance and out into the sun.

‘You’re not smoking up there?’ Mr Walshe asked even as he was taking the plastic Bic lighter from his pocket. I grinned. On impulse I turned to the cliff and belted what I imagined a high G. The dart of sound carried up the gullies, seemed to swirl against the stone and thendisappeared somewhere in a faint echo, leaving only us, the grasshoppers and the birds.

‘Sound like a smoker, Mr Walshe?
You
have a go, Sir, lets hear.’ Around him boys egged him on. Mr Walshe blew smoke though his nose and handed me the lighter.