The Rowing Lesson (9 page)

I’m hanging onto your every breath, the faint whistle as the air escapes from your lips. The pause, where time stops, and so do you, and then the next inhalation and the merry-go-round spins around and around, and I’m flying backwards with you, leaving Ma and her newspaper and the screens and machines behind.

* * *

A WHISTLE BLOWS as your train pulls into the station. Nobody helps you with your suitcases. Hell’s teeth, Harry, you’re a man now. You look up and there it is. Table Mountain. Look at the famous tablecloth of cloud spilling over the top! Look at how flat the mountain is!

You’re standing in the middle of Adderley Street, the city humming and swirling around you, a current that’s pulling you this way and that. The mountain is not saying anything but the seagulls are screaming and the air is sharp with the smell of the sea. The flower sellers are sitting with their buckets and their blooms and this is what your ma told you about, the swirl of yellows and pinks and oranges, reds and purples. You want to buy a thousand daisies, a million roses, all the white blossoms in the world because today is the first real day of your life, with your hand on your suitcase, and your suit almost fitting but not quite. A little big in the shoulders but the pants are cuffed and straight and how can you worry about anything on a day like today.

It’s noon and the cannon bellows from the old castle. The birds skitter and dip. And look what happened! The sky got even more blue, and that tablecloth keeps rolling over the top of the mountain, rolling and disappearing like magic! You can’t stop watching but you have to. You have to find your way to Men’s Residence.

You see women walking up and down the street, their skirts bouncing around their hips, wearing gloves and hats and jackets, crisp and city smart, city slickers with their heels clicking on the pavement. They’re smoking and laughing and talking, their lips are red and their hair is soft, and they’re all city girls. Their scent drifts past you and it makes you dizzy and you almost faint. Lead me into temptation, please lead me there, you’re begging them but they can’t hear you. They keep on walking and talking and they don’t see you standing there, your eyes big and dark, your nose pointing East then South. A regular old compass! That should help me get around you’re thinking, as you pick up your things and try to find your way to Groote Schuur. I’ll just follow my nose.

You’re on another train, to Mowbray this time, each crunch of the wheels bringing you closer and closer to the hospital. People are sitting on benches and smoking. The windows are streaked with grime, and you peer out. The mountain’s still there, I was just checking. There’s a girl sitting opposite you and her knee bumps into yours. You say you’re sorry but it’s her leg that did it, that scraped your pants and took the skin off your heart. She’s wearing stockings, isn’t she, and where do they end? Your eye lands like a fly on her skirt, in her lap. Her hand is there, resting, and she could brush you away, just like that, but she doesn’t. There are flecks of white and yellow and pink in the brown of her skirt, stars floating around in the brown night of her lap. You feel yourself sinking and swooping into the folds, floating and swirling, until you get sucked in, doing somersaults all the way, right down the drain.

Isn’t that a French roll in her yellow hair? A twist, a loop, a plum bun? She lights a cigarette and the smoke billows at you, not a tablecloth but a whole bloody blanket. You climb out of the blanket into the fresh air, onto the platform of the train station. So that’s where the smoke is now. The Mountain is lifting its cloud-covered hip at you, rocks cocked sideways. Or is it Devil’s Peak?

There’s a mournful trumpeting sound in the air, a sound that you’ve never ever heard before. It leads you past the rows of little houses, with their
broekie
lace and tiny front yards. You cross the street, and there’s a shop on the corner, the mountain towering ahead, the mad trumpet still ringing in your ears. You’re beginning to get worried that it’s something loose inside you, the same piece that vibrates with joy, rattles with fury.
Ag
, there he is. It’s the fish man, with a pole across his shoulders carrying baskets filled with fish. He’s blowing a fish horn, a little trumpet made out of seaweed. You’re close enough to see the veins in his forehead as he blows for his customers, the way the rabbi blows the shofar to call his congregants at the New Year. A fat housewife comes out, with an apron full of shillings. She calls the fish man Gatiep, and stands beside him like a sergeant major while he rifles through the
stokvis
, the
kabeljou
, the
snoek
, looking for a fish that’s good enough for the madam. You feel the saliva pool in your mouth, the tang in your nostrils, the smell that’s linked, now and forever, to the wail of the little fish horn, calling all fish-lovers to come out and buy.

You’re five again, shorter than your father’s knee, and you’re standing in the waves at Buffels Bay watching the Coloured fishermen coming in with their catch. He lifts you up to look, and you want to jump into the middle of the pile of fish. You want to have scales and a tail, and you want to swim. Your father laughs and says, it’s tickets for those fish. They’re flopping, not swimming, and soon somebody will buy them and cook them for supper. You watch the fishermen scale them on the rocks and it’s like watching the stars get scraped out of the sky. Their eyes are ringed in silver and if you look into the middle, the black middle, you can disappear. A wave knocks you down and you come up gurgling, sea water spurting out of your nose.

Joseph! Your ma is suddenly there and screaming, He’ll drown! And she has you up in her arms like a housecat, up in the air, and down on the sand. Plop. You can see her breasts wet and heavy under the ruffled part of her bathing costume. They almost knocked you over.

Gatiep is holding a
snoek
in front of you, the famous fish of the Cape. Do you have any coelacanth? you ask, and Sorry, he says, we don’t have cedar camps. The housewife is looking at you as if you need your mouth washed out with soap. I just wanted to know, you say. You know that’s how they caught the first one. In a fishing boat. It has a puppy dog’s tail.
Ag
, that one, says Gatiep. Old Fourlegs. He laughs a hacking laugh and the housewife backs away, as if he’s got rabies.

Where’s the new hospital? you ask Gatiep, and he points up the road, across a big street. Fresh white buildings with red roofs, a slow curve under the mountain. The Palace of Sickness. Men’s Residence is a few blocks away. This is what the warden told your mother on the telephone. The fish horn is fading, fading, as you carry your heavy suitcase and your trunk towards Groote Schuur. The Hippocampus is not far from the Descending Horn. The place where you will live and eat is not far from the place where you will take a sharp knife and cut into the body, where you will lift the veil of the skin and peer in.

But that’s next year, after botany, chemistry, physics and zoology. There’s one last gasp left in 1938. Soon 1939 will be yours.

Chapter 7

YOU LOOK UP Adderley Street, towards Table Mountain and the klopse are coming, made up in blackface, white rings around their eyes and mouths, wearing top hats and satin costumes, in yellow and purple, bright orange and lime green, turquoise and pink. It’s
Tweede Nuwejaar
! The day after New Year.
Boem
, pffff,
boem
, pffff . . .
“O Alibama, O Alibama . . . die Alibama die kom oor die see . . .”

Listen to that bubbling banjo. The Coon Carnival is here. Mickey, who shares a room with you at Men’s Residence, is standing next to you and he’s shaking he’s so excited. Mickey comes from Kimberley and he is not used to wearing shoes. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and claps and sways just like the
klopse
coming down from the mountain. Mickey Levin, he said, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, when you met him a few days ago. Are you the chap from George? He has a pencil-thin moustache and is about a foot taller than you. His face is in the way but you don’t even care. The music is fantastic!

The first group has sequins on their top hats, shimmering pink frock coats, white satin trousers. Even their shoes are white. They are so close you can see the beads of sweat dappling their black and white faces, the wetness under their arms. You can hear the creak and rustle of their costumes, the sound of their breath between songs. It’s bloody marvelous the way they double shuffle and shoulder shake, the way their bodies tremble and dip with that mad minstrel sound, African ragtime and American jazz, dancing and laughing together under that blue, blue sky, the fairest Cape in all the circumference of the earth, so said Sir Francis Drake.

And Mickey. He loves to quote, and drink Scotch, and sometimes he takes you along, like today. He says you’re his right-hand man, his batman, his swan’s foot, his croix de guerre and you’re not quite sure what it all means but you say yes, and you take the bus or the train or you walk, taking two steps, and sometimes three for every one of his.

Moppies
and
sopvleis
, funny songs and serious ones, love songs and marching tunes, all the way to the Green Point Track, where there’s a big singing competition.
Boem
, pffff,
boem
, pfffff, the
ghomma
drum beats the hot sun right into your bones. You can feel a line of sweat curling into a road across your scalp, then dripping down your neck into a wet field across the middle of your back, soaking that stiff new shirt from your father’s shop on Hibernia Street. Harry, Mickey says, this comes from when the slaves were freed. When was that? You remember the tree outside the library in George, and Maisie and Ma and Bertie and your father, and suddenly the sun dips behind the mountain.

1834? Something like that. You look at the Coons and the colours are so bright that you want to scream. Let’s go back, you say to Mickey, I’ve had enough. But the
klopse
keep coming, waves and waves of flaming colours, and stamping feet, cascades of satin, whole mountains of song and dance. Come on, man, Mickey says, I thought you were a song-and-dance man. What’s wrong with you?

Suddenly the river comes to you. You’re on a boat again with your old friends and it’s not so hot anymore. The sky is grey, threatening rain, and you’re rowing and rowing and rowing. Someone is tickling you from behind and it’s that Gertrude. Damn her! You’ve just lost the oar and over you go, straight into the water, rocking the boat and turning everything upside down. But when you turn, it’s Mickey and the water is your own sweat, not the river. He looks down at you, blocking the sun, and you want to hit him for being there, just standing there like that, bigger and taller and better.

What’s wrong with you? He gives you a big
klap
on the back which makes you grind your teeth. He put a canna leaf in your beer two nights ago and you will never ever forget how horrible it tasted. Now he wants to go for a drink somewhere and he’ll probably put something else into your drink. Don’t growl at me, Harry, he says, save that for the Krauts. Krauts, what krauts? You had almost forgotten about them since you came to this city, with its tablecloth and fierce winds and crowds of high-heeled girls click-clacking down the streets. Mickey likes to bet and he’s got one going with another new chap, Sam, about what happened in September. Mickey says Hitler will not stop and Sam says of course he will. He’s got Sudetenland and now he’s happy. That’s enough
lebensraum
, don’t you think?

You remember Maisie doing Physical Jerks and then, Yes, I believe it is peace in our time! Your ma was happy although your father grumbled about what happened to the Czechs. Come on, Joseph, she said, the prime minister’s such a fine-looking gentleman!
Fein Shmecker
, he said. I’m sure they had caviar on toast while they signed away the whole bloody country. Your ma stared at him in that English-English way. Your father crumpled, sat behind his paper and you could hear her seething inside, Look at him, he’s from the shtetl. He didn’t even pass Matric.

You’re walking down Long Street with Mickey and it’s blazing hot. Your ears are still stinging from the drums and the songs and there’s suddenly a Coon right in front of you, washed in green and gold. He flashes a big smile in your face, his front teeth missing. You bump into him and his head darts up and down, his face against your shoulder, as he dips and twirls around you. There’s a black-and-white streak on your new jacket, where his makeup came off. He blows a big, fat kiss when he sees you rubbing the spot. Now you and Mickey are standing in front of the Blue Lodge, a big old cake of a building. It’s light blue and dark blue and white, with a dark blue roof and filigreed Victorian balconies light as an Irish girl’s blue, blue eyes. Mickey’s father is in the hotel business and he knows the man who owns the Blue Lodge. Blau is his name, blue just like his place. Harvey Blau. Just ask for him, he told Mickey, tell him you’re my son and he’ll give you and your pals a free drink.

Drinks on the house! You’re in the ladies’ bar, and it smells like Sunday afternoon, cool, a little damp, the rose-red carpet sticky under your feet. Old smoke is still in the air, and a few glasses have a bit of drink left in them. The bartender, Moses, has his dark arms in the sink, washing tall beer-glasses with steaming, soapy water. Blau is there, a cigar between his lips, and his eyes the colour of whiskey. He’s wearing suspenders, girding his round stomach like exclamation points. He rocks back on his little feet, looking at Mickey as if he’s a godson. Mickey Levin, he crows, You’re going to be a doctor! Mickey pushes you forward, and you hold out a hand, embarassed. Harry, pleased to meet you. Blau winks at Moses, Where are the girls? Miss Lily is sleeping, and so is Koeka.

The clock ticks heavily on the wall. Four o’clock. The paint on the walls is reddish, like the floor, with dark, sweaty patches. Mickey has found a newspaper and is sitting on a sagging, bow-legged armchair. You try a cigarette but it tastes like ash in your mouth. Blau left and now it’s just you and Mickey and Moses in the back, restocking and reshelving the bottles. You ask for water and Moses smiles and gives you a huge glass filled with warm water. It’s as big as a bathtub and you raise it to your lips. Cheers! You say but Moses has ducked under the bar and Mickey is almost asleep, as if this is his own house. There’s a sound on the staircase like the twitter of birds and your throat catches. You almost drop water all over yourself but you put the glass down, and move it away. Let someone else drink up this lake.

You look into the forest of mirrors and glasses because you don’t want to look the other way, at the creaking, laughing stairs. Up goes an eyebrow, as you catch yourself in the mirror, between the Avocat and the Richelieu. Blue-black brows, slicked down hair, another wing of the same bird, and that damn nose again. You point it up, not South. That’s better. You can smell the girls from here, your mother’s lilac mixed with brandy and sweets and comics. There’s one in the mirror now, and it’s probably Koeka. Her yellow hair is coiled and twisted as if she just fixed it. You notice all the hairs that didn’t make it. The tiny bushes and thickets still sprouting all over her neck. What happened to her eyebrows? They’re so thin, that it looks like someone polished her forehead and scraped them off by mistake. She’s sticking her tongue between her teeth and your ma would scold her for that.
Ag
, she’s just licking off some lipstick. She catches you watching her in the mirror and she whirls around, twirling her tight, tight skirt. Bottoms up!

Her eyes are muddled and covered with makeup and her blouse is one of those frilly jobbies, in brown and black and grey, and you can’t tell whether it’s sliding off or not. It’s all shifted and tight, her body struggling against the fabric. Your eyes leap onto her breasts, nesting there, as you wrap yourself around the bar stool, holding it between your legs as if it’s going to buck, and knock you to the ground.

Wragtig
, Mickey really is asleep. There’s a soft, puffing sound coming from his chair and the newspaper crinkles a little. The other one, her hair black and loose down her back, is in a dressing gown and slippers. She lights a cigarette and whispers in the yellow one’s ear. On the house. Moses looks up, and he has a boiled egg and a slice of bread on a plate and the dark one goes over to eat it. He calls her Koeka, and so Lily is the blonde, with the twisting clothes and the fluffy neck.

Nobody talks to you. Maybe they don’t notice. Or they’re busy. Mickey is the man, the one who everybody is waiting for, the one with the key in the door. You can see dust dancing in the doorway, a shaft of light coming in from a window in the passage. If you stare for long enough, the specks turn into light green and orange dots, pulsing in front of your eyes, in time with the lubb-dubb of your heart. Your lips are dry and you can’t even remember if the wind was blowing outside anymore. Koeka walks over to you, sits down right next to you on a bar stool. She has something in the right corner of her mouth, a bit of bread, or a smear of fish and all you want to do is tell her to wipe it off. Instead, you try to stare into the distance, except there is no distance. Koeka leans close to you and you can really smell her now. Her hair drifts across your arm, and it looks like the seaweed in the Wilderness lagoon except it’s black not green. You never liked that seaweed. She even smells lagoony, you’re thinking, as you consider trying another cigarette. God, there’s some food on her hair! You have to do something.

Let’s go, she says, and she takes your hand as if she’s marching you off to detention. She’s winking—or blinking?— at you over her shoulder and that long lagoon hair is flying into your eyes and you’re walking up the stairs into the dust and the light, past dying flowers on the walls, into a new smell altogether, blocked drains, sea water and urine. Where’s Mickey? You look back and Oh, my God, he’s necking with the other one, Lily, and his hand is in her brown shirt. You’re going to die of fright. What does this lagoon lady expect? What the hell!

You wanted the fluffy one, the chicken girl, not this one, touched with the tar brush. Her hair drips into everything, flies into everything, moss trailing into brown water at Ebb ’n Flow. What if it gets into your mouth. You run the back of your hand across your lips, checking. She’s opening the door. It sticks a little and she gives it a shove.
Ag
, no. Not this place. It’s got water on the walls, a wobbling lopsided flower stain that’s probably someone’s toilet overflowing upstairs. She’s undoing your belt! What did Mickey say when you weren’t listening? What was he telling you on the train from Mowbray about Harvey Blau’s funny hotel. You were looking at a nice-looking girlie then, and she wasn’t wearing a bloody dressing gown. In fact, she was getting her stockings right and you were watching. Mickey’s mouth was moving but you must have ducked because the words didn’t touch you. They kept going and going like a tune in another room, in another house.

Is she really laying your pants out like that, as if she’s your maid or something? Maybe she’s going to iron them and this was really an ironing trip, and you’re in a special ironing hotel. Come here,
boytjie
, she says, and she puts your hands inside the dressing gown right on her ta tas.