Zebra Horizon

by Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

  *

  School started again and nothing much had changed, except that I had been promoted to matric without having written one exam.

  “Everybody should be so lucky,” Peggy said enviously. “I worked my backside off to get where I am, and look at you – no swotting, no sweat and the result is just the same. It’s not fair.”

  “Don’t forget,” I said to her, “that when I go back to Germany I’ll still have to go to school and get my Abitur, while you guys will enjoy the bliss of university life.”

  This, and the thought that then she would finally be able to shave her legs to look like everybody else, cheered Peggy up tremendously. She even shared a packet of liquorice with me, which kept us busy all the way through Mr Cuthbert’s math’s lesson.

  Ludwig went to the auditions for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and got the part of Miles Gloriosus. Once the rehearsals began, he was out just about every evening.

  Julie spent a lot of time painting. She wanted to participate in V.B.’s annual amateur painters exhibition – for the sake of the art, but she also had her eye on this year’s first prize: a return flight to Paris including a one week ticket for the Louvre.

  Art had always been my favourite subject at school, so I told Julie that I also wanted to expose myself. She roared with laughter.

  “I don’t paint that bad,” I said indignantly.

  “Go and get your dictionary,” Julie managed to say before she collapsed again.

  We looked up ‘to exhibit’ and ‘to expose’ and I also grinned.

  The best way to survive in a country where they don’t speak your mother tongue is to keep a good sense of humour.

  Kim and her brother Julian had got surfboards for Christmas and we went to the beach as often as we could. I didn’t know when Kim did her homework, because in the evenings she and her mom were involved in making the sets for the ‘Funny Thing’

  “Do you want to come to the rehearsal?” Ludwig asked me one evening. “Meet some interesting people and see how it’s all done.”

  I went with him to the Victoria Theatre, an impressive Victorian building, in the old part of town. It was surrounded by a formal garden with palm trees and flowerbeds. The foyer resembled the ones I had seen in South African hotels, red carpets, heavy crimson curtains and darkish furniture from about 3 decades ago.

  From inside the auditorium came the sounds of a piano, interrupted by hammering and various voices. We went up some broad steps and walked through an ancient wooden door right into the mysterious guts of the acting world. Even as an outsider I could immediately see that something was not quite right.

  The lady at the piano in the orchestra pit didn’t seem very concerned, but on the stage a slim woman was pulling her hair out and talking in a distressed voice between mighty puffs on a cigarette. I recognized her as Joelle Gorman, the lady Ludwig once had introduced me to as South Africa’s best director. About 20 people were grouped around her, looking as if catastrophe had struck. When she saw Ludwig, Joelle threw her arms up and said: “My darling, you won’t believe it. Hilary is in hospital with pneumonia.”

  “I can’t possibly play twins by myself,” an angular dark blonde woman said with a weird accent. “We need a second Gemina.”

  “I’ve already asked everybody I can think of,” Joelle said. “Nobody wants to do it.”

  “I don’t see a problem,” Ludwig said calmly.

  Joelle’s eyebrows jumped up to her hairline. “But Ludwig, we are 5 weeks into rehearsals. Only 3 weeks to go until opening night!”

  “Some 6th sense told me tonight to bring along just the person we need,” Ludwig grinned unperturbed. With a theatrical gesture he pointed at me. All of a sudden everybody looked in my direction.

  Oh no, not me!

  “Meet Mathilda from Germany,” Ludwig introduced me cheerfully.

  I hate being stared at.

  ”I’m sure Mathilda wouldn’t mind taking over Hilary’s part,” Ludwig grinned happily.

  Ever heard of asking people before making big announcements?

  I was furious.

  Phhhhh

  I didn’t want to kick up a fuss in front of all his friends…and they all looked at me so expectantly.

  “I don’t think I’m a good actress,” I protested weakly.

  “Ever done any acting before?” Joelle asked with a glint of hope in her eyes. Everybody hung on my answer.

  “Ja.” I thought with horror of our family tradition, which demanded a play being performed by all her grandchildren every year for my grandmother’s birthday. My biggest part had been Frau Schlippermilch in The Herb in the Chickenbroth. After that I had concentrated on doing props.

  “The Gemina is a nice little part with a bit of singing and dancing,” Joelle said enthusiastically.

  Hell, this is getting worse by the minute.

  “You and Lucy would make a perfect pair of twins,” Joelle pointed to the angular dark blonde.

  I could just feel that there was no way out. “Okay, I’ll try.” I wished I had never put a foot into that damn theatre.

  After I had met the members of the cast and some other people involved in the play, I felt a bit better. There seemed to be some quite interesting characters around and the ambiance was good – energetic and creative. The only person I didn’t like was an arrogant he-man in his 30s called Douglas, who thought the sun was shining out of his backside.

  Joelle quickly explained to me that the ‘Funny Thing’ was a musical farce set in ancient Rome. “And you are one of the concubines,” she finished zealously.

  I grinned skeptically back at her.

  A whore! This exchange year is definitely broadening my horizon in all respects.

  On my way to the toilet, I came across Kim, dressed in overalls splattered with paint. She was walking in a kind of trance and only woke up when I said: “Hey, you’ll never guess what happened.” I told her the events of the evening, but the fact that I now was part of the play only arose mild interest in her. She kept on grinning into space like an idiot.

  “What’s up?” I asked her. “You haven’t taken any dope, have you?”

  Kim produced a super sigh and asked: “Have you met him?”

  “Who?”

  “Dougie.” Sigh.

  “You mean that arrogant arsehole with the crew cut and the big feet?”

  This woke her up properly.

  “Mathilda, you only say that ‘cause you don’t know Dougie. He’s the most gorgeous, intelligent, talented guy walking on this planet.” Sigh. “ He’s so cute.”

  I don’t believe this. Another crush! For that poep!

  “Isn’t he a bit old for you? He must be at least 35.”

  “I adore mature men.” Sigh.

  “Most mature men have got wives and kids and…”

  “His kids are at boarding school and Dougie said his wife is not a problem.”

  “And you believe that crap. Kim, you’re crazy. This guy is using you, all he wants is a one night stand.”

  “Can’t be. We’ve already made love twice. I’m telling you, Mathilda…,” she was so overwhelmed by her memories that words failed her and she just collapsed into a series of sighs.

  If that poep was the last guy on the planet I’d take my bicycle and shove off double fast.

  ”He’s simply the best,” Kim said with that far away look in her eyes.

  “Let’s talk about it in a week again. In the meantime I’ll buy you a big box of tissues. I guarantee you, you’ll need them because by then you’ll cry your eyes out.”

  Since the beginning of the term my school life had got heavily on my nerves. School was bad at the best of times, but to just sit out my time not getting any credit for it in Germany was the pits. I wasn’t really an actress at heart but at least the play gave me something constructive to do, especially after I also joined the set makers. It was much more fun to saw planks and to paint than to hop around on the stage. After 3 days I learned that ‘da
rling Dougie’ had fucked about 60% of the female cast and crew, but Kim still refused to kick him in the butt.

  One morning I went with Jack, the main set builder, to collect sheets of plywood at some theatre lover’s place. We went onto the south coastal road and turned into a narrow dirt track winding its way through the bush. Monkeys sat on the fence poles of smallholdings where people kept horses, made cheese or ran tennis schools. Down the hill, the Indian Ocean flung enormous white crested waves at rocky reefs and sandy beaches. We turned into a plot where a couple of domesticated plants raised their heads amongst the indigenous vegetation. Abstract sculptures lined a potholed drive way. At the end, a newly white washed but clearly ancient house peeped out of a mass of flowers, Norfolk Pines and casuarina trees. We walked up some trodden out steps onto a wide stoep. Chinese bells rang in the wind; a black cat was sleeping on a much-used sofa. Jack knocked at the front door, nobody answered. He said: “Harriet Fenessey never locks anything,” and opened the door. Inside it was all Oregon pine floors, not quite straight pressed steel ceilings, stacks of paintings of any imaginable period and style, a piano with blue candles in candleholders, shelves crammed with books and a side board stacked with beaded calabashes, Indian traami and Japanese Reiki things, and another cat in one of the big, comfortable looking armchairs.

  Jack called: “Anybody at home?” but the only sound in the house was the tick tack of a clock on the mantle piece of a fireplace.

  “Let’s look in the garden.” Jack led the way through lemon trees and hibiscus bushes to a fenced in swimming pool. In the shallow end of the pool a tall, trim, greying woman in her late 40s was teaching 3 small kids how to swim. It looked like nothing extraordinary really, except that this was South Africa and 2 of the kids were black.

  It’s probably a major crime to have black kids in your swimming pool.

  Jack took in the scene, shrugged his shoulders and sighed deeply. “This is Harriet, a hell of a nice person. The only trouble is that one of these days she’ll get herself in a big lot of shit.” He opened the gate to the pool and shouted a greeting. Harriet turned round and I nearly keeled out of my bio sandals. Here was the woman who had given me The Dark End of the Rainbow book on the bus.

  She said, “Morning Jack,” and then looked at me. After a couple of seconds her smile broadened. “What a surprise! My young friend from the bus. How did you enjoy the book?”

  We had tea on the stoep. After they had each eaten a slice of the surprisingly tasteless cake, the black kids disappeared with a maid called Seraphina. Jason, the little white boy, fetched a box of coloured chalks and got stuck into drawing on a blackboard on the wall. Harriet, Jack and I talked about theatre, marathon runners, the Black Sash and mulberry jam, all subjects close to Harriet’s heart. I had never heard of the Black Sash before. It seemed to be a white women’s organisation foundet in the 50s, fighting for the rights of the blacks. The women wore black sashes while they were in action, that’s where the organization got its name from, and they did silent protests.

  Harriet said she knew the Winters because Ludwig was her main supplier of banned books. She lit her umpteenth cigarette and asked if we’d like to stay for lunch. She was expecting 4 other people but there was enough stew for everybody, she would just tell Seraphina to make more rice and potatoes.

  “Thanks Harriet, but unfortunately we can’t,” Jack said. “We have to get the set finished.”

  I was disappointed. I would have liked to stay on. Harriet looked like the kind of person one would never have a dull moment with.

  “We’ll arrange some other time.” Harriet fished with long, bony feet for some well-worn sloffies. “Let me show you where the plywood is.”

  A gardener called Mastermind helped us load it on the bakkie.

  “Thanks for everything,” Jack said when we left. “Here are 2 tickets for the opening night and you’re welcome to stay for the after party.

  Harriet said she wouldn’t miss that for anything, and she and Jason waved until we were out of sight.

  “Gee, don’t you girls look gorgeous,” Kevin the flautist whistled, when Lucy and I walked for the first time in our costumes onto the stage. The 3 Proteans whistled; Norm, the technical director dropped his notes, and Gerald, the publicity and advertising guy, stood there with his mouth wide open. The girls giggled. Lucy wriggled her bum provocatively and Douglas, the slime, drooled over her. I watched that lot and thought that for a country in which it was a crime to leave display dummies naked in shop windows, our costumes were probably quite risqué. All we wore was a see-through sort of veil, tanga panties and golden stars stuck to our nipples. With the back-lighting the audience would be able to see all the hills and valleys; I didn’t give a damn. What pissed me off was that sick South African attitude about nakedness and sex. Douglas and the other guys were going more bananas by the second with their comments and gestures. The girls still giggled.

  Phhhhh. Looks like the guys need to prove that they are real males.

  If this lot were let loose on the nudist island where my family spent holidays every year since I was born, the guys would drop dead with a heart attack and the girls would die of embarrassment.

  When the set was finished, I had learned a mighty lot about the use of tools and my vocabulary in that field had improved by about a 1000 per cent. The closer we got to opening night the more everybody plunged into last minute preparations, improvisations and half serious nervous break downs. How the others managed to carry on with their normal day jobs was a total mystery to me. We hardly ever left the theatre before midnight. I hardly ever went to school. Ludwig seemed to thrive on the pressure. I hadn’t thought it possible, but he was even in a better mood than in normal times, and I had never seen him in a bad mood yet.

  The cat Doodles had 11 kittens in Joshua’s cupboard. Greta swapped 5 of them with the neighbour boys for the right to watch 5 hours of TV. That was the day when my host parents decided to get their own TV set.

  During our very last rehearsal Kim caught Dougieboy in flagrante with the fat girl who played Vibrata.

  “In the wings!” Kim howled. “With that cow! I’m going to kill the bastard.”

  “Just wait until the show is over,” Joelle said business like, “and get on with your job as a callboy.”

  Ma Jameson, the only one ignorant of her daughter’s and Dougie’s affair, slumped into the ancient sofa in the dressing room and stayed there completely immobile for 10 minutes. Then she got up and left without a word. A short while later she was back with a bottle of whisky. She summonsed Kim to the empty box office to talk.

  Rehearsals went ahead with Douglas playing it cool and with everybody listening for sounds coming from the box office. Vibrata, who only had a sparrow brain at the best of times, got nothing right and didn’t give a shit. Joelle lit one cigarette after the other, tore her hair and carried on about actors and discipline, and that you can’t be one without having the other, in spite of all the stories about artists leading excessive lives.

  The door of the box office opened exactly at the start of the interval, which was the best timing of the whole evening. Mother and daughter Jameson came out arm in arm staggering slightly, and got hold of Douglas just before he could escape into the men’s loo.

  “Listen, you child rapist,” Ma Jameson said with fire in her voice. “Don’t you dare come near my daughter again.” She nearly killed Douglas with her eyes. “And prepare yourself for a charge of having sex with a minor.”

  For once Douglas lost his arrogant stance and a grimace of dread spread across his face. The Jameson women turned round and left. Nobody said a word. I watched Douglas’ jaw drop and then I ran after Kim and her mom. They were already in the street when I caught up with them. Kim grinned for half a second and made a guarded thumbs-up sign, invisible to her mother. Ma Jameson came to an unsteady halt under a street lamp and slurred: “There ish noshing like a vul’ mlomo.”

  I wanted to ask her what a vul’ mlomo was, when 2 smartly dr
essed couples came round the corner. They took one look at us and crossed over to the pavement on the other side, the men gallantly walking between their women and us. It dawned on me that I was only wearing my Gemina costume, and it shot through my mind that it was probably a criminal offense to be out on the street in a see-through outfit. The public might take me for the real thing. Ma Jameson was doing her best to aggravate the situation by waving her whisky bottle around and hollering about that bloody sex maniac. The 2 couples put a safe distance between themselves and us and kept on throwing curious looks our way.

  “Let’s go before they call the cops,” I said to Kim. She grabbed her mother and the 2 of them went off towards their car. I just hoped they would get home all right.

  Back in the theatre people were standing in little groups discussing the events of the evening. There was the whole range from ‘serves the arrogant bastard right’ to ‘the poor guy has had it’. Vibrata was sitting in the auditorium eating chocolate bars, looking more than ever like a pink, ruminating cow. Dougie boy was nowhere to be seen.

  I found my host father in the dressing room reading a sailing magazine.

  “Ludwig, outside all hell is popping loose.”

  “Ja?” He wrote a note into the magazine. “You mean because of Kim and Doug?”

  “Ja.”

  “I’m not interested. They both knew what they were doing. Now they just have to live with the consequences.”

  “But that Douglas is a total pig. He is married! He promised Kim all sorts of things to take advantage of her.”

  “That girl is not as naïve as people think. Douglas never raped her, but he’s a stupid fucker. He should use his brains more than his prick and act more discretely. If they really lay a charge against him he’s finished.”