The Smell of Apples: A Novel (19 page)

While he's still standing there smiling, I suddenly hear the front door open at the far end of the passage. For a moment I lift my head, and when I put my eye back to the hole, the red reflection is gone. He's still standing as he was, but he's not smiling any more.

Quietly I roll the carpet back and get up without creaking the floorboards. It's exactly as I thought: the funny business in the lounge just now, when they were speaking about 'the stranger'. Of course! It must have been some code to say she should come to his room! But now I'm not so sure ... I start feeling terrible for being so suspicious of Use. Use won't ever do something like that. She's never even had a real smooch with a boy, let alone come into a married man's room in the middle of the night. I must have imagined it all. I didn't look properly, and anyway I couldn't really see from that difficult angle. It's all Frikkie's fault! It's him that planted the idea about Use and the General in my head.

While I'm praying, I ask the Lord to please forgive me for thinking such filthy thoughts about my own sister. I also ask him to forgive Frikkie for leading me into

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temptation. Starting tomorrow I'm going to do my best to be nice to her again.

Every time I'm forced to leave the cover of dry trees and bush, the sun scorches my neck. If I can reach the Cunene, I can move up along the river to Qalueque. The growth here is thicker than it was early this morning. When I stop to listen, I can hear the sounds of being followed. My attempts to shake them off by running in a semicircle have failed. Now I'm headed straight for the river. It sounds like more than one of them, and they're gaining on me. By now they know I'm alone and that fatigue is getting the better of me. My lungs are ablaze with the dust I pant in through my cracked lips. I consider dropping off the webbing to make running easier. Then I give up on the idea. Branches lash at my face like whips, and the taste of blood wells up in my mouth. The sound of people crashing along behind me, catching up on me, filling my head, surround me. I storm on blindly, desperate to find the river. I must find the river that will lead me to Qalueque.

It's the last day of our Standard Three year. On the way to school I keep looking at the side of Use's face to see whether maybe she was in the mirror last night. But in the morning everything looks different and I feel terrible about the horrible thoughts still sitting in my head. Maybe I dreamed it all.

I look at Mum's dark glasses in the rearview mirror. When we drive to school in the mornings the sun catches her in the eyes so she always puts on her dark glasses. Mum will be bitterly disappointed if she ever found out

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what was going on in my head. A dirty thought is as bad as a dirty deed and there's no such thing as a small sin or a big sin. Dominee Cronje has said it a hundred times in his sermons.

Because school is breaking up, we finish earlier than usual, and we all bring presents for the teachers. Miss Engelbrecht gets all excited about the small antique copper scale Mum bought and wrapped for me to give to her. Frikkie gives her some expensive perfume and she's so excited she says she'll forgive him all this year's bad behaviour.

Miss Engelbrecht hands out the annuals, and I feel like jumping out of my skin when I see my essay inside. It's the first time they've chosen one of my essays, and I can't wait to show Dad. And Use. Use always has two or three things in the high school annual, and now it's my turn to brag for a change. In the back of the annual, there's a photograph of Frikkie and me with our rugby team. Frikkie and I are sitting on either side of the PT teacher and Frikkie's holding the ball on his lap.

We usually get our reports on the last day of term, but at the end of the year the school posts them to our homes. That's to make sure your parents get to see your report and that the whole family knows whether you've failed or passed. I've never been scared of failing, but some of the kids in the B and C classes end up having to do the same year all over again. The dumb Van Eeden boy has failed Standard Three twice, and if he fails again he might have to go to the special class next year.

Mum collects Frikkie and me from the Delports' after she has picked up Use from the high school. Frikkie's coming to stay with me until the day after tomorrow, when we leave for Sedgefield. I can't wait to get into the car to show Mum and Use my essay. The moment I get into the car, I open my suitcase. I push the annual between

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the front seats and tell Use to look on page thirty-eight, because there's a surprise for her. When she sees what it is she calls out: 4 Marnus, this is fantastic!' And she holds it sideways for Mum to have a quick look while she's driving. Mum laughs and sticks her arm backwards between the seats and gives my leg a squeeze. She says she's a proud mother today. I tell Use to also look at me and Frikkie and our rugby photo. She glances at the photo and then tells us to keep quiet so that she can read out my essay to Mum. I'm feeling a bit silly now, because now Frikkie must think I'm trying to be a smart-arse. I pull my face so that he can see I think Use's being stupid. Then she starts:

In the museum

Marnus Erasmus, Standard 3A

If you walk through the museum you can learn lots of interesting things about our country. There are many interesting exhibitions and beautiful old paintings. The best ones are of the uniforms they wore in the olden days to stop the strandlopers and the Hottentots from plundering and robbing the farms of the poor Dutch settlers. There are even old Matchlock guns in the showcases. The first war against the Hottentots was seven years after Jan Van Riebeeck arrived in the Cape, but the settlers were too strong for the Hottentots and they ran away like cowards. Later they all went to live in the mountains. Then the Boers had to make war against the Xhosas at Algoa Bay and later against the Zulus in Natal because the evil Dingane i impis murdered their wives and smashed the babies ' heads against the wagon wheels. The further north the Boers trekked in the olden days, the cheekier and more wicked

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the natives became. But the hand of God rests over the righteous and now our country is made up of four provinces and in 1961 we became a Republic. After three hundred years we have one of the strongest armies in the world. Our soldiers also don 7 use Matchlocks any more, they have FNs. FN stands for Fabrique Nationale, because they're made in Belgium. You can learn all of this by walking through the museum and by just keeping your eyes open. Open eyes are the gateways to an open mind.

Mum says it's a wonderful essay and one day I'm going to write even better essays than Use. I wait for Use to say something, but she just pages through the annual without saying a thing. I don't know what to think because a moment ago she was still so impressed with me and now she's all quiet and disinterested. She changes her moods like a chameleon changes its colour.

While she's paging through the annual, Use asks whether Mum has heard anything more from Doreen and Little-Neville. Mum says Doreen has called again, and it seems like things are looking up for Little-Neville. He's not going to die. Maybe they can transfer him to Cape Town tomorrow. But the transfer will cost a lot of money, and Doreen can't really afford it. Mum says she's going to ask Dad whether we can pay for the transfer. Mum can always deduct it again from Doreen's wages at a later stage. She says that's the least she can do for Doreen, especially with Little-Neville being her favourite child. When a mother witnesses the suffering of her child, it's even worse than having to go through the suffering herself.

When I told Frikkie this morning about what happened to Little-Neville, he said he's heard that it smells terrible when human flesh burns. We wondered whether it smells

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the same when coloured and white flesh burns. It might be different because our blood's so different. On the Beetle's tape-player Ella Fitzgerald is singing a song from Porgy and Bess.

I wish we were already on our way to Sedge field. Mum says Mister Smith will be staying over with Brigadier Van der Westhuizen for tonight and tomorrow night. After that he'll be going back to America and we'll leave for Sedgefield. He's having supper with us for the last time tonight, and Dad wants to show him some slides of East Africa and Rhodesia. After supper Dad's taking him to Brigadier Van der Westhuizen because there's someone they can only meet late at night. It's a pity my essay isn't in English, because then I could have shown it to the General.

Maybe having to wait for two days before we go to Sedgefield isn't so bad after all, because now Dad will be coming with us from the beginning. Other years, he usually meets us there after some time. We have the greatest times at Sedgefield when Dad's there. We go fishing at the mouth of the lagoon almost every day, or we take the motorboat out on to the lakes. Dad always hooks the boat behind the Volvo, and brings it when he comes down. Some days, when Dad doesn't feel like fishing, we go for long walks through the Knysna Forests, or along the lakes. We always take the Roberts Birds of South Africa and see how many different kinds we can count. Last December we counted forty-two different kinds in two weeks. We also saw some malachite kingfishers for the first time in ages, and when we drove out to Oubos, to visit Uncle John, we even saw two pairs of fish eagles. They built their nests high up in the cliffs of the Grootrivier. Even though we sometimes go to visit at Oubos, we like Sedgefield more, because the fishing is better and the sea isn't as dangerous as it is at Oubos.

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But the best place for fishing is Botswana. Dad says he'll take me there once I get to high school. Every October, Dad and Brigadier Van der Westhuizen go up to the Okovango swamps to do tiger-fishing. Dad wanted to take me along with him once, but Mum said I was still too small. I begged and begged to go with Dad, but Mum put her foot down and said my nagging was 'an exercise in futility'. If I got sick up there in the bushes there wouldn't be anyone to look after me or any doctor to give me medicine. So my big dream is still to go tiger-fishing with Dad in the Okovango. Usually, Dad and Brigadier Van der Westhuizen take an army vehicle when they go up to Botswana. They replace the army number plates with ordinary ones, because R-vehicles make the Botswana government all edgy. Botswana's government is just like the rest of Africa; their president married a white woman and she had coloured kids who can't fit in anywhere.

'It's those poor kids I feel sorriest for,' Mum says, whenever people speak about Lady Ruth Khama and Sir Seretse. Overseas, where they have television, Dad once saw a programme about Sir Seretse. Dad says that Sir Seretse is so black he actually looks blue. When the Queen of England saw the blue glint on his skin, she mistook it for blue blood, and she summarily made him a Sir!

'But,' says Dad, 'even when a monkey wears a golden ring . . .' And without him even having to finish the sentence we know what he means. At times, Dad only has to start a sentence and we already know what he would have said. Dad always says a quick mind requires only half an explanation, and that's why it's never been necessary for him to give us hidings.

When we get home, Mum puts out some cold chicken and salad for lunch. But before we eat, she sends us down to the shop to buy bread. We take off our school uniforms

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for the last time this year and walk down St James Road to the shop. From the leftover change we buy ourselves a Crunchie each and we share a small bottle of cream-soda. We sit down on the pavement outside the shop to finish the Crunchies. If we arrive home with sweets, Mum will say we aren't going to eat our food.

I'm glad Frikkie's here, because I don't feel like playing with the Spiros. I'm still angry at them for running off yesterday when I fell down Mrs Streicher's steps.

But that's exactly what the English are like. They always run away. Dad says it's the Afrikaners that will have to keep this country safe when trouble comes. The English will all emigrate in droves, and run off to America and England because half of them have foreign passports. After the Anglo-Boer war, all the English soldiers left South Africa without even thinking about the thousands of women and children they had murdered in the concentration camps. Poor Ouma Kimberley was born in the concentration camps. Dad says it's typical of the British to criticise Hitler, when they themselves were actually the ones who started putting people into camps. Once, when we were driving past Rhodes Memorial, Dad said Cecil John Rhodes had been an imperialist who stripped our country of gold and diamonds. And when he died after ruining our country, he had his ashes strewn in Rhodesia rather than in this country he had milked dry. Dad said the Rhodes Memorial should rather be named after someone like Verwoerd, who had given his life in service to the Republic.

We see the old man walking towards us from the direction of Kalk Bay. He bends forward, and picks up an empty Coke bottle from the water drain. At first we don't pay him any attention, but then I recognise him: it's Chrisjan. It's the first time I've seen him since he walked off with our

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fishing gear. He's wandering along with his eyes on the pavement, and it seems like he's looking for something.

'Dag, Chrisjan,' I say, from where Frikkie and I are sitting on the pavement. He comes to a sudden standstill, and tries to straighten his shoulders.

'Afternoon, my Crown. Doesn't the Crown have a little loose something for an old man? The hunger's eating at the stomach.'

He's acting as if he doesn't recognise me. But he has to know me. After all, he worked in our garden for thirty years, first for Oupa and then for us. He bends forward, holding out his palm like a bergie. Dad usually gives them money, but I haven't got any for him. And anyway, Chrisjan isn't a bergie, he's simply unreliable and on top of that he's a thief.

'Stop pretending you don't know who I am. Dad's going to send the police to come and lock you up. They'll take you to Robben Island to chop rocks. That's what you'll get for stealing our fishing reels.' That isn't really true, because Dad never wanted to call the police. He said we weren't one hundred per cent sure that Chrisjan was the one who had stolen the reels. But all the same, we knew it was him, so I just want to frighten him a bit. When I start talking about the police, his eyes open wide and he denies that he knows anything about the reels. It's just like the Coloureds to act all stupid whenever it suits them.

'Chrisjan!' I say. 'Don't you know who I am any more?'

'Hasn't the baas got a little loose something—'

'Who am IV I shout at him, getting all irritated. I tell Frikkie we should go home. We get up to leave.

'I'm looking for empties, my Crown,' he says, eyeing the half-empty bottle of cream-soda I'm holding in my hand.

'Well, first tell me who I am. Then you can have the bottle and go get the deposit for it.'

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He's almost kneeling now, and Frikkie chips in and says he should behave himself like a Coloured even though he is a Kaffir. But Chrisjan is a Coloured, his skin is just a bit darker than most of the others. If Frikkie and I have an argument with someone at school, Frikkie sometimes says: behave yourself like a white, even though you're a Kaffir.

'So,' I ask, 'are you going to tell me my name?'

He pulls his face until it's covered in even more wrinkles, and holds out his hands again: 'I am Chrisjan, my Crown.'

We burst out laughing, and I put my hands to my sides with the cream-soda bottle resting against my hip: 'Not your name, baboon! Tell me what my name is, then I'll give you the bottle.'

He shuffles about in front of us, and looks up and down the street. I start walking as if I'm going to leave without giving him the bottle. As I pass, he takes me by the arm and starts begging again: 'Please . . .' But I pull away from him, and in the same movement I knock the empty from his hand. It bursts into splinters across the pavement. I didn't do it on purpose.

'Oh Jesus, Basie, what now? I'm sorry baas, I'm sorry . . .'he says, and bends to pick up the pieces.

'Leave the glass, Chrisjan. It doesn't mean anything now . . . it's no use. Here . . .' and I hold out the small cream-soda bottle. There are still a few sips of green cool-drink left at the bottom.

'You can have it,' I say, and he takes it from my hand, saying thank you, over and over again.

While we're walking home, I start feeling sorry for him. I can't believe how he's changed since he left. His face has gone wrinkled like an old raisin and the long strands of beard on his chin have turned completely grey. He looks like someone who already has one leg in the grave. I feel

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bad because he would have gotten a bigger deposit for the litre bottle than for the small cream-soda.

Before we turn up St James road, I quickly turn to look back at him. He's already on the other side of Main Road, moving up along the railway tracks. He comes to a standstill and throws his head back, and with one gulp he downs the last bit of cream-soda that was left in the bottle.

Frikkie asks whether I found out how the General got his scar. I answer that I haven't asked him, and I warn Frikkie not to call him 'the General'. It's Mister Smith. I tell him that the General is half-Spaniard and half-Indian.

'But then he's a Coloured!' Frikkie cries out. 'I thought he was as dark as anything.'

'You're mad!' I answer. 'You have to have real black blood in you to be a Coloured.'

'Well! What do you think the Indians are?'

'I don't know, but they're not black. And anyway, you're not meant to know about it.'

With us being blood-brothers and all, I wonder whether I should tell him about last night - when I saw the reflection in the mirror. But maybe it was all a dream and none of it really happened. I'm sure you're not meant to tell your blood-brother about dreams.

Behind me the bush is alive. Voices are shouting, but they We drowned by the noise in my head. I wind my way up the river, knowing already that I cannot keep going. At any moment now they 11 be around me, cornering me against the water like an animal with no escape. Only into their arms: the arms of Fidel's sons, who have awaited me so long.

In the distance I can suddenly see the dam! Qalueque is right in front of me. Someone should be there already,

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waiting for me. I want to shout, to call for help, to ask for cover from them. Again and again I try to force a cry from my throat. From the corner of my eye I catch the movement of someone almost next to me. I cannot look away from my path, I try to scream, hut no sound leaves my throat. Now, so close, and the dam seems to be clouding over with mist. Everything is turning white. Voices in languages often heard but never understood. As I stumble and fall forward, I hear the sound of boots coming to a halt in the dust, right beside my head.

At supper Use speaks to the General as if nothing happened last night, and now I'm sure I dreamed it all. Mum tells us that Doreen called again late this afternoon. Little-Neville's getting transferred to Groote Schuur tomorrow, and Mum told Doreen that Dad will pay the ambulance for now.

When we've finished eating, we all go through to the lounge, and Dad tells me to fetch the slide projector from his study. He's taking Mister Smith over to Brigadier Van der Westhuizen's house later, but before he leaves Dad wants to show him slides of Tanganyika and the war in Rhodesia. Dad was mostly in the front lines during the war, so he couldn't take many photographs. Sometimes he just asked his orderly to take some shots when things were less dangerous. But taking photographs in a war is really a luxury. Mostly you only do it when you have time or when something happens that you really want to remember.

'Not that you could ever forget things that happen in war,' says Dad. 'Every atrocity committed by those guerillas is imprinted on your brain, just like the faces of your wife and children on the photographs you carry in your inside pocket.'

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Use fetches a bottle of liqueur from the cabinet, and the grown-ups drink from Mum's tiny crystal glasses with the engraved grapes. We drink Appletiser, because Mum doesn't allow Coke and Fanta into our house. She says gas cool-drink contains all kinds of colorants and things that eat away the lining of your stomach. The Delports always have Coke and other cool-drinks in their fridge. Because I like Coke and cream-soda so much, I never say a word about the lining of the stomach - not when I'm visiting there.

Mum and Use are sitting on the couch, and Frikkie and I on the carpet in front of them. Dad and the General are sitting on the Lazyboys. The projector is next to Dad, and its little feet are resting on two of Mum's thick Bach and Scarlatti sheet-music books. Dad has taken down the big False Bay oil painting from the wall where he's going to show the slides. Mum explains to the General that the bay is called False Bay because in the olden days the sailors coming back from the East Indies always mistook it for Table Bay. Dad laughs and says the old sailors were a stupid lot. How it's possible to mistake Hangklip or the Hottentots-Holland for Table Mountain he can't imagine! He says the Dutch were really a strange lot. At one stage they even wanted to dig a canal from False Bay across the Cape Flats into Table Bay. Later they gave up on the idea, because it would have taken too much work. But anyway, where have you ever heard of someone coming to dig canals in the middle of Africa! Did they think this was still Amsterdam, or what? But the Dutch soon learned that Africa is a different ballgame altogether.

The General asks why the mountains are called Hottentots-Holland. Mum tells him that the Hottentots used to live in the mountains and when Jan Van Riebeeck came to the Cape, he said those mountains are the Holland of the Hottentots.

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Dad says I can turn out the lights.

The first lot are of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. There are slides of Oupa's hotel and the white beaches with all the palm trees. There are some of black children carrying huge baskets full of coconuts and bananas on their heads. There's a nice slide of Dad and Oupa Erasmus standing next to Oupa's Daimler Benz. When Dad says that it's him when he was seven, the General says it could just as well have been me, and Dad winks at me through the half-dark. I'm glad I'm going to look like Dad one day.

Lots of slides are of Kilimanjaro and Meru. Some were taken from an aeroplane, so you can see right into the craters at the top. The craters are covered with snow and the sun is reflected like rainbows against the camera lens. Dad says that Mount Meru, which bordered one of Uncle Samuel's farms, used to be even higher than Kilimanjaro. But because it was a volcano, it blew its top off many millions of years ago. Now the volcanoes are dead.

'Imagine how that lot would panic if it erupted today,' the General says, and we all laugh.

'Could solve the problems of over-population,' Dad answers.

The General says there are still live volcanoes in Chile. In the south of the country there are huge snow-covered volcanoes, and if you go to the top, you can look down into the boiling lava in the craters far below you.

'And don't think you are the only ones with overpopulation!' he says. 'Chile has one of the highest population growth-rates in the world - and our volcanoes are not helping to solve the problem.' And the grown-ups laugh.

Then there are slides of the Serengeti and of the Ngorogoro Crater, and of thousands of wildebeest and zebra crossing the plains in huge herds. Then there's a

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series of slides with Oupa standing between hundreds of elephant tusks, most of them stretching above his head. The General whistles through his lips and says it's impossible.

From his seat in the dark, Dad points to the two big tusks on either side of the fireplace: 'That pair belonged to my father.' Dad always says the tusks are the only thing he's really sentimental about.

On the next slide Oupa is standing with his foot against an elephant bull he shot. In the background the Ndorobos are already chopping out the tusks. The bull's intestines are bubbling out of its stomach across the ground like big red and pink balloons.

Among the slides there are also some that belong to Uncle Samuel. One is of a group of people standing around John Wayne when he came to Tanganyika to make a movie. On the slide everyone is smiling and looking very happy. Tannie Betta is holding a small puppy and John Wayne, wearing khaki clothes, has his arms around her and Sanna Koerant's shoulders. Old Sanna's having a good laugh about it all, and you can just see teeth. Mum says the movie was also shown in South Africa. She says the music was written by Henri Mancini, and the theme tune was the famous 'Baby Elephant Walk'. The film was called Hatari, which means 'danger' in Swahili.

Dad tells me to turn on the lights, and the General says:

'It seems like heaven. How can you ever forget it?'

'It was heaven,' Dad answers. 'Once you've seen Kilimanjaro, you never forget.'

When Dad's ready, I turn the light off and lie down on the carpet next to Frikkie. Dad says they can't stay much longer, because they have to leave soon for their meeting. I'm also starting to get tired, but we still want to see the slides of Rhodesia.

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I look at the General's face. In the projector's dim light he looks a bit like Dad. It's a pity he's leaving tonight. He was going to come fishing with us and I wanted to hear more about Chile.

The first Rhodesia slides are of Dad standing in a sandpit, giving orders to his officers. Then there are some of troops doing patrols. They're carrying rifles and mortars slung across their shoulders. Dad was still a colonel when he was in Rhodesia, but on the slides he's not wearing his epaulettes. Officers don't wear their ranks in battle, because if they do the enemy would target them specifically. Dad says it's not necessary to wear your rank during battle anyway, because when you fight, all soldiers are equal: your aim is to win - whether you're a troop or a colonel. Besides, if you're worth your salt as a leader, all the troops automatically know that you're the leader.