by Ekow Duker
‘May I ask why?’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘My mother likes it.’
‘It’s your wedding, not your mother’s,’ André said. He was not usually so forward but there was a brashness about the woman that irked him.
She looked at him strangely. She was apparently not used to being questioned and certainly not in Mthatha.
‘I attended mass at the Vatican last year,’ she said. ‘It was the most amazing experience of my life. It took me ages to get a ticket but I managed to in the end.’
She looked like the sort of woman who always got her way. Then she took a deep breath as if she were about to launch into a lengthy discourse and André began to regret ever engaging her in conversation.
‘Ever since that day,’ she said, ‘I simply can’t get it out of my mind.’
‘What, the Vatican?’
‘No, “Ave Maria”. I want you to play it just like they sung it that evening.’
‘I take it you’re Catholic then.’
‘Yes, I am. Do you have a problem with that?’
André suppressed a sigh. There were a multitude of battle lines one could draw in South Africa. Race, gender, age, political affiliation and now religion. In the quietness of Mthatha, he’d thought he’d left all that behind.
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘My father was Catholic. I’ve attended mass once or twice.’
She clapped her hands together and let out a trill of excitement. ‘Why, that’s brilliant! That makes you Catholic by association, if not by conviction. Father Majola will be pleased. He believes a Catholic wedding should be as Catholic as possible, from the priest down to the waiters.’
André frowned. He thought he’d heard the name before but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember where.
‘And if I wasn’t?’
‘If you weren’t what?’
‘Catholic by association.’
‘Oh, Father Majola doesn’t insist on it and anyway, I wouldn’t let him. It’s a nice to have, if you know what I mean.’ The woman looked at André across the table. ‘You look worried,’ she said. She’d shed her earlier belligerence and there was genuine concern in her voice.
‘It’s nothing. I was just wondering how the sound would carry in the open air.’
‘I’m sure it will be all right,’ she said. ‘ “Ave Maria” is such a wonderful piece the angels themselves will start to sing.’
André went pale and his knee banged against the underside of the table.
‘Are you all right?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes, of course. I just remembered there’s something I must attend to,’ he said. ‘A violin class.’ He got up quickly and shook her hand. ‘It’s lovely meeting you but I really must go,’ he said and hurried out into the street.
In the end, the wedding was as magnificent as the bride – whose name was Andiswa – had imagined. Amid the hubbub of the celebrations, she came looking for André. She found him sipping a drink by the bar.
‘Oh my god, your playing was exquisite!’ she exclaimed. Her narrow eyes flashed with painted glitter and delight.
André gave her a little bow. ‘You’re very kind. I’m pleased you enjoyed it.’
She clutched her lace-clad hands together and did a little curtsy of appreciation.
‘It was truly amazing! And I’m not the only one who thought so. Father Majola was so taken by your playing he wants to speak with you.’
‘What for?’ André asked. He looked up at an imaginary clock on the wall. ‘It’s quite late for me. I really must be going.’
‘Nonsense!’ she cried. And when André didn’t budge, she pouted in mock disappointment. ‘Really, André? On my wedding day?’
She seized him by the hand and led him to the decorated table where Father Majola was sitting.
‘Here he is, Father,’ Andiswa said. ‘He didn’t want to come so I had to drag him over here.’ She cupped a hand to her mouth and said in a stage whisper. ‘Be nice to him. He’s very shy.’
Father Majola turned ponderously in his chair. It was an ornate chair made of clear perspex and was not designed for a man of his bulk. His upper body turned first and it was only with the greatest of difficulty that the lower half of him followed. He was dressed in an immaculate steel grey suit with a white collarless shirt. He’d been given a lilac boutonnière and wore it with aplomb. Were it not for the heavy metal cross around his neck, he might easily have been mistaken for the bride’s father.
‘André, is it?’ He held out his large hand and waited for André to take it. ‘That was a marvellous rendition of the “Ave Maria”.’
André nodded. He wasn’t sure what he should say. The decorations were too bright and the chatter was too loud for his liking. He should have gone home when he had the chance.
‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ Father Majola said in his pulpit-ready voice. Several guests had already turned around to listen.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Where are you from then? Such talent must have a provenance.’ Father Majola’s voice was as friendly as before but his grip tightened imperceptibly on André’s hand.
‘I’m from the Free State.’
‘Aha!’ Father Majola declared. He looked around him as if he were expecting applause. ‘We’re getting somewhere at last. Clarens or Bloemfontein?’
‘Bloemfontein.’
Father Majola raised his other hand and waggled his finger in the air.
‘I’m sure we’ve met before.’
André felt hot all of a sudden. He tried to tug his hand away but Father Majola’s grip was too strong.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Father Majola pulled André towards him until their heads were almost touching. His thick legs formed a fleshy trap around André. He lowered his voice and spoke directly into André’s ear.
‘You’re the angel boy, aren’t you?’
A violent spasm rocked André but Father Majola held him firm. He should have recognised the black man. He was much heavier now and back then his head had been covered in a sprinkling of closely cropped grey hair; now it was a polished dome with thick folds of skin coiled around his neck.
‘God gave you such a beautiful gift,’ murmured Father Majola. ‘Why did you run?’
It all came back to André in a screaming rush. The Sacred Heart Cathedral in Bloemfontein. The warm yellow brickwork. The gilded processions and the majestic sound of the organ. His father, trussed up in a dark suit, sitting in the spot reserved for him in the front pew. The Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The twin crosses of the wooden confessional. Disbelief in the voice behind the curtain. His insistence. His stupid insistence. The questions. The hours of endless interrogation. The good priest, bad priest routine. So glaring, so obvious. Him crying and stumbling exhausted into the rain. The frantic cries of, ‘Elias! Elias!’ A huge black man, catching hold of him and carrying him back inside as if he weighed nothing at all. Then the large hands inside his shorts – probing, rubbing. The shouted words of scripture and tortured expletives. His mouth forced open, the salty taste of sperm snaking down his throat.
Now a sheen of sweat glistened on Father Majola’s broad forehead. ‘You have a unique playing style,’ he said softly. He made a fist and pretended to bow an imaginary violin. Then he gave a self-effacing cough and smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m not trained in music but I knew at once it was you. Won’t you come and see me at the cathedral tomorrow? You and I have a great deal to talk about.’
‘I think you’re mixing me up with someone else.’
Father Majola’s face split in a smile. He chuckled and patted André’s hand.
‘I notice you did not ask what I meant by angel boy,’ he said quietly. ‘How could I ever forget you, André Potgieter? Or would you rather I called you Elias Barnes?’
André tried to wriggle free but Father Majola’s grip was like iron.
‘Who would have thought we would meet again and here, of all places?’
Father Majola whispered. ‘They say coincidences happen much more frequently than we like to think. But I understand your hesitation. You play the violin like an angel. Is it so strange that the angels should recognise their own? Most people limp though life with no special favour, Elias. You, on the other hand, have been doubly blessed. First with a wondrous talent for playing the violin and secondly … well …’
His eyes narrowed and he chuckled softly. ‘You’ve been blessed with the other thing as well, haven’t you? That must be so bewildering for you, terrifying even. Believe me, Elias, I understand.’
André pulled his hand away and this time Father Majola let him go.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Father Majola pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. He was as tall as André and the metal cross nestled on his chest gave him an added air of authority.
‘Ah, the third denial,’ he said with a knowing sigh. ‘As a Catholic, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the significance of that.’
‘I’m not Catholic,’ André spluttered. ‘I never was.’
Father Majola held his hand out to André in a gesture of reconciliation.
‘As children we go where our fathers take us. I understand that also. Let us help you, Elias. Perhaps we were a little too …’ He glanced towards the bride and groom’s table where Andiswa and her new husband sat smiling among glittering fairy lights and garlands of white flowers.
‘Insistent,’ he said. He spat the word out of his mouth as if it were distasteful. ‘Perhaps we were a little too insistent when we first met you.’ He sighed again as if he were consumed by regret. ‘I’ve always prayed that one day, God would grant me the opportunity to apologise to you in person.’
He clasped his hands together and bowed his head briefly as if in prayer. André didn’t wait a second longer. He turned and pushed his way through the throng of wedding guests and was gone.
CHAPTER 12
It began to rain as André ran to his car. As he drove off, large raindrops dashed themselves against the windscreen and slithered down the glass. It grew chilly inside the car and his hands tightened on the steering wheel. Elias. He remembered Mrs Frederiks, his nursery school teacher. And how she leaned over him every morning, her breasts pressed against his back and her hand cupped protectively over his.
‘Let’s count out the horizontal lines together, Elias. One. Two. Very good. Now the last one. Just one more, Elias. One more.’
But before Mrs Frederiks could step back and say, ‘Well done,’ he’d have added a raft of extra lines to the first letter of his name until his capital E looked like a small comb standing on end. He never understood why Mrs Frederiks took it so badly. He got all the other letters right, didn’t he? But every time he caricatured a capital E and couldn’t spell out his own name, red blotches would appear on Mrs Frederiks’ cheeks and her nostrils would dilate in the most alarming manner. Humiliated, he’d sit on his little stool and try not to listen to the rest of the class shrieking and hooting with laughter. They laughed so hard you’d think Maria Snyman had shat her pants again.
‘Mr Barnes, we really need to do something about Elias,’ Mrs Frederiks declared to André’s father one afternoon. She’d seen him drive in and had run outside to waylay him in the carpark. She had her hand on the window sill to stop him from rolling up the glass.
André’s father bared his teeth and growled at her. ‘I’m in a hurry, young lady.’
Mrs Frederiks sighed with exasperation. ‘That’s the problem, Mr Barnes. You’re always in a hurry. I’m sorry to say this but neither you nor Elias’s mother appears to take the slightest interest in his development.’
She leaned into the car and waved André’s work under his father’s nose. The sheets of paper crackled loudly and André, who was standing behind her, wished he could run away and hide.
His father’s face darkened and he looked up at Mrs Frederiks with a sneer. He hadn’t been elected to the city council then.
‘Why don’t you just fuck off and leave us alone?’
Mrs Frederiks drew up in shock. She stumbled backwards into André, battering his head with her bottom. She smelled of freshly washed linen and something else he couldn’t quite place but remembered as oddly pleasant.
Defiantly, Mr Barnes revved the car engine. He’d bought the Toyota a few months ago and it was the only model of its type in Bloemfontein. André stood rooted to the spot. He didn’t know whether he was meant to go with his father or stay there with Mrs Fredericks. Then his father leaned out of the window and roared at him.
‘Come on, boy!’
He was climbing into the Toyota when the car lurched forward with a loud squeal of rubber. His father slammed on the brakes and André tumbled into the well behind the front seat. He was still upside down and trying to right himself when his father swore at Mrs Frederiks again.
‘If he can’t get “Elias” right, you can call him what you bloody well like! Call him André, for all I care.’
It had been as simple as that. He was hardly ever called Elias again. Not until that night in the chapel in Bloemfontein. Not until Father Majola. Not until tonight.
Elias.
Angel boy.
It was raining heavily now and the windscreen wipers thudded vainly from side to side. He wanted to stop right where he was and get out of the car with his violin and play. He didn’t care that there was a storm raging around him and that the water would ruin the instrument. He pounded his fist against the steering wheel and moaned out loud. What was it Father Majola had said? That he was doubly blessed? Well, he was wrong. He wasn’t doubly blessed, he’d been cursed twice over.
The first time the angels appeared, André was ten years old. He’d caught a slight fever and his mother had decided he must stay in bed and not go to school. His father had left for work already and by a curious sleight of physics, Trevor Barnes’ absence filled the house with light. The sounds of his mother tidying the house drifted up to André, a chattering of cutlery and the soft clapping of wooden drawers as they opened and closed. The radio in the scullery was tuned to classical music, an indulgence for his mother when his father was not at home. He thought the gushing of water from the kitchen tap was like intermittent bursts of applause.
All of a sudden, André heard a sharp knocking outside his window. He glanced up but no one was there. Just the crooked branches of the olive tree swaying in the wind. He pulled the bedclothes over his head and lay down to sleep when he heard it once more.
Rat-tat-tat.
‘Come in,’ André said in a small voice.
The knocking stopped and André felt a tingle of excitement as he watched the window. He half-expected it to open but it stayed firmly shut. ‘I must be imagining things,’ he muttered to himself after a few minutes. He was settling back into the pillows when a powerful downbeat of air swept past his head.
He should have been afraid, but strangely enough, he wasn’t. There were three angels that day, with wings so large they shouldn’t have been able to fit into the small bedroom. But somehow the walls seemed to move apart and gave André the sense of unlimited space. The angels had been more playful then. They swooped around André’s bed and turned cartwheels in the air, chasing each other in a perpetual game of catch.
André reached out his hands and tried to touch them but they stayed tantalisingly out of reach. Then the radio in the kitchen switched to an advertisement about car tyres and just as suddenly as they had come, the angels plunged through the window and were gone.
They came every day until André got better and he couldn’t make excuses to stay in bed anymore. His mother had to drag him out of his room because he would have given anything to stay at home.
‘But the engele!’ André wailed.
‘Be quiet!’ his mother snapped. She glanced warily over her shoulder. ‘I told you already. Your father won’t like to hear you talk like that.’
‘But I saw them! They were right here!’
&nbs
p; Marietjie gave her son a conciliatory kiss on the top of his head. ‘Now hurry up or you’ll be late for school. I’m sure the engele will be here when you get back.’
She stood at the door and watched him go. When he glanced back, he caught in her drawn, anxious face something in her expression akin to fear. He waved at her and she quickly pulled her features into a nervous smile. When he’d tried to tell her that the things he’d seen were kind and gentle beings, she’d said: Of course; after all, weren’t children little angels too? Then he went on to say that the engele touched each other. And at first she’d thought he meant they made the sign of the cross on each other’s foreheads. But when he went on to explain in innocent detail what the engele actually did to each other, she clamped a hand over her son’s mouth.
‘André!’ she gasped in horror. ‘Promise me you’ll never say those words again! Do you hear me?’
It didn’t take long for André to make the connection between the angels and classical music. They seemed to be especially fond of stringed instruments. He borrowed his mother’s portable CD player and took it with him wherever he went. She only had the one disc, Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in E minor. He sat by himself and played it over and over again while scanning the horizon like a ship’s captain searching for land.
One evening when his father came home, he was more pensive than usual. His silence cast such a pall over their family that neither Marietjie nor André could bring themselves to eat.
They’d gone and given his job to a kaffir, Trevor Barnes said. André was not so shocked at the news. After all, they’d heard the ANC threaten to do that so often on the radio that all the boys at school believed it would happen eventually. It was his mother he felt sorry for. The thought of his father at home all day, seven days a week, would be enough to make her ill.
‘What will you do?’ his mother asked. She had gone very white and the tendons stood taut along her neck.
‘It’s not for a few months yet,’ Trevor Barnes said. ‘I’ve got one or two things lined up.’