by Ekow Duker
He wiped his mouth, then his head with its lacquered cap of dark black hair snapped towards André. His eyes were hard with dislike.
‘André?’
‘Pa?’
‘Why do you keep playing that poofters’ music?’
‘Pa?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! Mr Botha, your headmaster, called me today. People are talking about you, André. They say you’re behaving like a bloody lunatic.’
Things galloped downhill after that. If his father was going to call him a poofter and a moffie, then he’d play a moffie’s instrument. Just to piss him off. And if he were lucky, the engele just might come back. His father wanted him to play rugby but he detested it. The cold, the mud, the locker room banter, he hated everything about it. They always put him out on the wing, with instructions to ‘Just run’. He hated that. It made him feel like a kaffir running for his life with a pack of heavy white boys panting close behind.
He gained weight in a subconscious effort to get out of playing sports at the hoërskool. In time, ‘Just give the ball to Barnes, he’s quick’, became ‘Don’t give the ball to Barnes, he’s a fat cunt.’ And as André’s girth increased, so did his father’s disdain. And in response, André played the violin with even more diligence and fervour. He discovered he had a natural facility for the instrument. He struggled with Afrikaans and English because of his dyslexia but to the specialist’s surprise, he could read and write music effortlessly.
Try as he might, however, the engele came less and less frequently and their absence caused André great distress. He began to suspect that they only came on those occasions when he played particularly well or played a piece of rare beauty. But when the engele did appear, the sheer ecstasy of their presence made up for the tortured longing that had gone before.
It was still raining when André drove into their yard. He spun the wheels of the car and sent a shower of water and gravel clattering against the side of the house. His mother was standing on the porch, a small, porcelain statue with a furled umbrella at the ready. By the time he’d switched off the engine and looked up, she was right outside the car, the edges of her form blurred and undulating with the rivulets of rain. Mother and son looked at each other for what seemed like several minutes. Then Marietjie’s shoulders sagged heavily and she turned and went back into the house.
CHAPTER 13
Something changed for Karabo the day they took Fezeka back to live with Aunt Thembeka. The Mthatha River lost its colour and became grey and muddy to match her mood. She longed to lie in bed and listen to the howling savagery of the rain in winter. But when winter came she couldn’t wait for it to be over. She grew listless and had little interest in her studies. This caused Teacher a great deal of distress because, well, he was Teacher and his child had to do well in school. He sat Karabo down one evening for a stern talking to.
‘What is the matter with you?’ he asked. He pointed at the report card on the kitchen table as if he could barely believe what it said. ‘Forty-three per cent in maths? You used to get eighties and nineties before.’
Karabo shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was just one exam.’
‘Just one exam?’ Teacher retorted. He snatched the report card off the table and studied it, although he must have known it off by heart already.
Karabo wasn’t in Teacher’s class at school because Teacher had thought that would be inappropriate. Nonetheless, his colleagues still looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and envy. Suspicion because he’d married one of his students and envy because she was a yellowbone. It made him appear debauched, a slightly refined version of the teachers who screwed the girls any chance they got.
Teacher slapped the report card because it wouldn’t be right for him to slap Karabo. ‘Just look at your marks in English!’ He held the paper up to her face. ‘Fifty-four per cent! That’s marginally better than your mark in maths but it’s still not good enough!’
He looked at her and his face was a poignant blend of guilt and reproach.
‘You really need to put in more effort, Karabo,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, you know you only have to ask.’
English was Karabo’s favourite subject. From an early age she’d always been commended on her vocabulary and her father took enormous pride in that. She knew words that the other students and sometimes the teachers themselves did not know. Karabo had Teacher and Precious to thank for that. When she was younger, she’d hear her parents’ voices raised in bitter argument behind their bedroom door. That was how her vocabulary grew so prodigiously from simple phrases like ‘The cat sat on the mat’ to more complex ones like ‘You deceitful whore!’ and ‘What do you take me for? An imbecile?’
Nowadays, their arguments breached the confines of their bedroom and roamed freely about the house. Karabo began to dread one of them coming home for fear of the eruption that would follow. She hung out more often with Joelene and Tracey Jacobs, the Coloured girls. They’d go to the cathedral where Joelene and Tracy made up all sorts of misdeeds to tell Father Majola. On more than one occasion, they’d sworn that they’d heard wet slapping sounds coming from the other side of the confessional booth.
‘You should have a turn,’ Joelene said to Karabo as she passed her a cigarette. ‘Father Majola won’t mind.’
Karabo mumbled something about not being Catholic and left the sisters to outdo each other with the depravity of their confessions.
Teacher reverted to a refrain he’d rarely had to use with Karabo. The last time he’d said it she must have been only six or seven years old. It had frightened her so badly at the time, she’d woken up in the middle of the night screaming for Teacher.
‘Do you want to be a checkout girl at the Spar?’
Karabo shook her head.
‘What do you want to be then?’
He peered at her over the top of his spectacles and for the first time, Karabo noticed the flecks of grey in his hair. She had the absurd thought that he was about to die and she wanted more than anything to leap at him and throw her arms around his neck. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. For ever since that morning at Aunt Thembeka’s house, Teacher’s lustre had diminished.
‘I’ll become an architect,’ Karabo said. She’d never given architecture much thought before. But an architect was someone who made things orderly and beautiful when they were in a mess. And right now, that’s what made most sense.
Her answer pleased Teacher because his eyes narrowed and lit up the way they did when her mother made one of his favourite Ghanaian dishes.
‘An architect, eh? There’s a very good faculty at Wits.’
‘I don’t want to study in Johannesburg.’
‘Where will you go then? To Cape Town?’
‘I’ll go overseas.’
‘But you’ve never been overseas in your life!’ He reached out to her as though she were slipping through his fingers already.
Karabo stepped back and Teacher’s face fell. She felt a cruel urge to hurt him in the same way in which he’d disappointed her.
‘I’ll get a scholarship. You won’t have to worry about me.’
‘You won’t be accepted anywhere with marks like this,’ Teacher said nastily.
Then something snapped inside Karabo and she screamed at her father. ‘No one expects me to amount to anything! Not even you!’
She hurled a dinner plate to the floor and it shattered in a burst of white confetti. Teacher cowered in his chair with his arm raised above his head. She’d never acted like this before, especially not towards him. She thrust a bare wrist under his nose. ‘Why is that, Teacher? Because I’m not as black as everyone else? Because I’m not as black as you? You’re just as bad as them! All you think I’m good for is to use my looks to get money from men.’
He made to get up but she pointed a trembling finger at his face and he sat down again.
‘Do you know how shocked people are when I say I want to go to university?
They ask me what’s wrong with Philadelphia College. Philadelphia College! It’s a third-rate school with two rooms and a signboard outside advertising their pass rates. And it’s above S’bu’s butchery. I’d rather die than go there!’ She paused to catch her breath. ‘I’m sick of people telling me I can’t do this and I can’t do that! I thought you were different, Teacher. I thought you were on my side!’
A shard of porcelain cut deeply into the sole of her bare foot, leaving a trail of bright red blood behind her.
‘Please calm down, Karabo,’ Teacher said. ‘Look, you’re hurt.’
Karabo snarled at him and ground her foot into the floor to show him she really didn’t care. She looked around wildly for something else to throw but there was nothing else to hand except a set of kitchen knives sheathed in a block of pine wood. Their eyes came to rest on them at the same time.
Teacher took the block of knives and placed them on the kitchen table with a loud thud.
‘Here they are,’ he said grimly. ‘Go on.’
His voice was so sad that Karabo felt faint all of a sudden. Her legs buckled and Teacher caught her just in time and held her close.
‘I’m so sorry, Karabo,’ he said, but this only made Karabo cry even more. She clung to him and wept until the front of his shirt was sodden with her tears.
That was how Precious found them, Teacher rubbing Karabo’s back and whispering to her in Fante while she gasped against his chest like a dying fish. Karabo stiffened when she heard the rustle of clothes behind her. She waited for her mother to say something, but Precious just stood there staring at the bloodied debris on the floor and at Teacher and Karabo murmuring softly to each other. Then she put her shopping bags down on the counter and went to the bedroom without saying a word.
Teacher sat Karabo down and began tending to her wound. His touch was so comforting that Karabo would have cut her other foot just to have him fuss over her some more.
Teacher smiled and patted her foot as if to say he’d made it as good as new.
‘Karabo, my barefoot architect,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry for shouting at you, Teacher.’
He waved her apology away as if it were of no consequence.
‘Go and talk to your mother. And put on your slippers before you cut yourself again.’
Karabo knocked on her parents’ bedroom door and waited for her mother to say ‘Come in’. When she didn’t hear anything, she turned the handle and tiptoed inside. She hardly ever went in there. If the Bentils’ house were a nightclub, Teacher and Precious’s bedroom would be cordoned off with red ropes and a sign saying Reserved.
Precious was sitting on the bed with her handbag open beside her. She had her back to Karabo and was staring at the photograph of Cape Coast castle Teacher had hung on the wall. It was a crumbling white fort in Ghana, with a row of rusted cannons pointing towards the Atlantic Ocean. When Karabo was small, Teacher would bring the picture into her room and prop it up on the bed and she’d stare at it, wide-eyed with excitement. Then he’d tell her stories about the English governor and his soldiers and how resplendent and precise they were in their red uniforms and polished black boots. He told her about the merchants and the local chiefs they bartered with, about the fishermen who dried their nets on the rocks around the castle. He told her about the chapel on the upper floor with the wooden shutters that opened out onto the sea. Karabo was so captivated by Teacher’s stories of Cape Coast castle that when she fell asleep, she could hear the sound of Englishmen singing hymns while the slaves wailed in the dungeons beneath their feet.
‘I’ll buy you another plate,’ Karabo said softly.
‘Go away,’ Precious said. ‘Just leave me alone.’
CHAPTER 14
Not long afterwards Precious went to see Bill Harrison. He’d asked Precious to call him Billy but she could never get her tongue to form the name. Billy was a name for small boys. Billy was the name of someone you patted on the head and gave sweets to and Precious didn’t want to think of Bill Harrison in that way.
Precious waited for him in the middle of the cornfield after work. From where she stood she could see the grey sloping roof of the Harrisons’ house pasted against the sky. Precious had just started a job in the municipality and the day had been particularly exhausting. The moment she sat down at her desk, excited gossip spread around the building that there was a new yellowbone on the second floor. A new yellowbone? Imagine! People traipsed in all day with all manner of excuses just to see what she looked like. At first it was just the men but by mid-morning the women were coming too. Precious began to feel like some exotic animal in an air-conditioned zoo. Then she overheard one of the women say with iron-clad conviction that Precious must have slept with Joseph Mbazima, her new supervisor. For how else could she have got the job? Precious’s eyes pricked with tears because the woman had been so warm and pleasant when she’d greeted her. She could only imagine the stories they’d tell if she’d been as light skinned as Karabo.
The ears of corn were so tall now that they towered over Precious’s head. The stems were hard and knobbly and coated in fine, hard bristles. She remembered how they’d stuck to her skin when she used to meet Bill here. She did her best not to touch them.
It wasn’t like Bill to be late. But it had been so long since the last time that she couldn’t reasonably expect anything to be the same. The patch of sky above the blades of corn was brooding and dappled with grey clouds. As a gust of sea-kissed air swept through the field, the plants all shivered in unison and waved their slender green arms. Precious looked anxiously down the furrow for any sign of Bill. She was getting more nervous with every minute that passed. She felt as though the corn plants lifted their curved roots out of the soil when she wasn’t looking and inched a little closer to her. If Bill didn’t come soon, they’d wrap their green leaves around her and smother her to death.
Then she heard a rustle behind her and there he was. Precious closed her eyes because she wanted to see him little by little. To hear his voice before she took in the rest of him.
He pushed two corn stalks aside and strode in as if this were a grand hall and not a grubby corner of a cornfield. His cornfield.
‘Hello, Precious,’ he said.
Had his voice just caught in his throat when he said her name? Bill could get carried away just by saying Precious’s name in a way Teacher never could. Bill was fluent in isiXhosa but Precious had asked him long ago to only ever speak to her in English. She needed to imagine he was from somewhere far away and not from a farm just down the road from where she lived.
Bill’s hair was longer than she remembered and had turned so white it reminded her of a tassel of corn. It fell in straight lines down his face and curled upwards in an effeminate bob just above the nape of his neck. His face had filled out and yet his eyes were more sunken than before. It was as if the bones of his face had rotted like old timbers and given way.
‘Where are your spectacles?’ Precious asked. He always used to bring his spectacle case with him and place it neatly on the ground while they made love.
He chuckled and touched the side of his head as if she’d reminded him of something.
‘I had the op,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Went up to Joburg for it.’ He spread his arms out wide and his hands brushed the greenery on either side. ‘Hallelujah! I can see!’
‘It is not right to blaspheme,’ Precious said, hiding her smile.
‘Aren’t you pleased I came?’ he asked.
Precious unfolded her arms from across her chest and let them hang loosely down by her sides.
‘I’m happy to see you, Bill. I didn’t think you would come.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course I had to come.’
He set down his rucksack and closed the short distance between them. Then he touched her lightly on the waist as though he were asking her a question. Precious shook her head and Bill’s face fell a little, but not too much to be obvious.
‘We could go somewhere, if y
ou like,’ he said. He needed it to be her suggestion, not his, but the eagerness in his voice gave him away.
Precious glanced at the rucksack at his feet. It bulged suspiciously like it had a blanket inside.
‘People are talking about you, Bill.’
He grew shy all of a sudden. He kicked at the red soil with its small gullies and pebbles and scattered the ants trooping in and out of their tunnels.
‘Really? What do they say?’
‘That you bring your women workers out here to the cornfields.’
He gave Precious a sly look and she could tell he was pleased to have a certain reputation.
‘Is that why you …’ He gave a slight nod at the ground. ‘Why you won’t …’
There was a time when Precious found his obliqueness endearing. Now she just found it tiresome. She drew herself up to her full height and addressed him as sternly as she could.
‘I’m a married woman, Bill. I don’t do those things anymore.’
She’d only done it then because she’d believed she wasn’t as clever as Teacher. She couldn’t do sums in her head the way he could. No one followed her when she walked down the aisles in the supermarket, waiting breathlessly for her to perform some feat of mathematical agility. She’d always had this lurking fear that one day Teacher would find her out and leave her, not that he didn’t know already. Bill had been her way of bracing herself for that eventuality, a way of evening up the score.
He smiled at her as if to say she didn’t know what she was talking about but was too polite to tell her to her face.
‘You were married then,’ he said quietly.
‘And I’m still married, Bill.’
He nodded and looked her evenly in the face. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s Karabo.’
He did not appear surprised. ‘What’s the matter with her?’
She wished Bill hadn’t taken her directive to stay out of Karabo’s life so literally. Karabo had been a toddler when Precious asked him not to come by the house when Teacher wasn’t there. But Bill could have left a small present by the gate. Or enquired through an intermediary as to how Karabo was. Or even stopped her in the street – God knew they’d passed each other often enough – to ask her how she was doing at school. Strangers did that all the time. So why not Bill?