“Life is all beginnings and ends. Nothing stays the same, lad,” my granpa said at last. “Parting, losing the things we love the most, that’s the whole business of life, that’s what it’s mostly about.”
My heart sank. Was he trying to tell me Nanny was dead?
He was doing his looking-into-nothing trick again and his pipe had gone out. “She was a soft and gentle woman. Africa was too harsh a place for such a little sparrow.” With this he struck another match and touched it to his pipe. Puff, puff, swirl, swirl, puff, puff, gurgle, but he did not continue. While it didn’t sound a bit like big, fat Nanny, my granpa was always a bit vague about people. I waited patiently for him to continue. Taking his pipe from his mouth, he used it to indicate the rose garden around us. “I planned it for her; the roses were the ones which grew in her father’s vicarage in Yorkshire, the trees too, elm and oak, spruce and walnut.” He replaced the pipe in his mouth, but it had gone out again and he had to light it a third time. I had already observed that my granpa could waste a great deal of time with his pipe when he didn’t want to give an answer or needed time to think. So I waited and thought it best to say nothing, though none of it made sense. Nanny, who discussed everything with me, had never once talked about roses, and I knew for a fact that she came from a village in Zululand near the Tugela River. While she had often talked about the crops and the song of the wind in the green corn, of pumpkins ripening in the sun and of the sweet tsamma melons that grew wild near the river, she had never mentioned anything about roses.
After another long while of looking into nothing my granpa continued. “When she died giving birth to your mother, I couldn’t stay here in her rose garden.” He looked down at me. “Sometimes it’s best just to walk away from your memories.”
I was beginning to realize that Nanny had nothing to do with my granpa’s conversation.
“Her brother had come out from England and decided to stay on. A good rose man, Richard. In thirty years he hasn’t changed a thing. When the roses grew old he replaced them with their own kind.” He pointed to two perfect long-stemmed blossoms, the edges of their delicate orange petals tipped with red, on the terrace below. “I’ll vouch that is the only Imperial Sunset standard rose left in Africa,” he said with deep satisfaction. Then, picking up the secateurs, he stood and turned to look about him. “Now Dick’s dead I’ve come home to her rose garden.”
They were the most words I could recall having come from my granpa in one sitting. While he hadn’t answered my urgent questions about Nanny, I could see that he had said something out loud that must have been bouncing around in his head for a long time.
“There’s a good lad, off you go now.” He moved over to resume the tidying up of old Mrs. Butt. I rose from the steps and started to walk toward the house. Smoke was coming from the chimney and breakfast couldn’t be too far away. The clicking of the secateurs suddenly ceased. “Lad!” he called after me. I turned to look at him. “You must ask your mother about your nanny. It’s got something to do with that damn fool religion she’s caught up in.”
Imagine my delight when I walked into the kitchen to find our two little kitchen maids, Dee and Dum. With a squeal of pleasure they rushed over to embrace me, each of them holding a hand and dancing me around the kitchen. “You have grown. Your hair is still shaved. We must wash your clothes. Your mouth is stained from the fruit. You must eat. We will look after you now that Nanny has gone. Yes, yes, we will be your nanny, we have learned all the songs.” The two little girls were beside themselves with joy. It felt so very good to have them with me. While they had only been on the periphery of my life with Nanny, who had scolded them constantly but loved them anyway, I now realized how important they were to my past. They were continuity in a world that had been shattered and changed and was still changing.
“Me, Dum,” one of them said in English, tapping her chest with one hand while covering her mouth with the other to hide her giggle.
“Me, Dee,” the second one echoed, the whites of her eyes showing her delight as they lit up her small black face. They were identical twins and were reminding me of the names I had given them when I was much smaller. It had started as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee and had become simply Dum and Dee. I laughed as they showed off their English.
The room smelt of fresh coffee and Dee moved over to a tall enamel coffeepot on the back of the stove and Dum brought a mug and placed it on the table together with a hard rusk and then walked over to a coolbox on the stoep for a jug of milk. She returned with the milk and Dee poured the coffee into the cup, both of them concentrating on their tasks, silent for the time being. Dee ladled two carefully measured spoons of sugar into the mug of steaming coffee. It was a labor of love, an expression of their devotion. Dum brought me a riempie stool and I sat down and Dee placed the mug on the floor between my legs so that I could sit on the little rawhide chair and dunk the rusk into it just the way I had always done on the farm. The two girls then sat on the polished cement floor in front of me, their legs tucked away under their skirts.
On the farm they had simply worn a single length of thin cotton wrapped around their bodies and tied over one shoulder. Their wrists and ankles had been banded in bangles of copper and brass wire that jingled as they walked. Now these rings were gone and over their slim, twelve-year-old bodies they wore sleeveless shifts of striped cotton that reached almost to their ankles.
We chatted away in Shangaan. They asked me about the night water and I told them that Inkosi-Inkosikazi’s magic had worked and the problem was solved. We talked about the men who came in a big truck and lit a huge bonfire and killed and burned all the black chickens. The smell of burning feathers and roasted chickens had lingered for three days. Such a waste had never been seen before. My granpa had sat on the stoep at the farm for a day and a night, watching the fire die down to nothing, silently puffing at his pipe.
At last we reached silence, for the subject of Nanny had been standing on the edge of the conversation waiting to be introduced all along and they knew it could no longer be delayed.
“Where is she who is Nanny?” I asked at last, putting it in the formal manner so they could not avoid the question. Both girls lowered their heads and brought their hands up to cover their mouths.
“Ah, ah, ah!” They shook their heads slowly.
“Who forbids the answering?”
“We may not say,” Dee volunteered, and they both let out a miserable sigh.
“Is it the mistress?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Both looked up at me pleadingly, tears in their eyes.
“She is much changed since she has returned,” Dum said.
“She has made us take off our bangles of womanhood and these dresses make our bodies very hot,” Dee added with a sad little sniff. Both rose from the floor and stood with their backs to me, sobbing.
“At least tell me, is she who is Nanny alive?” They both turned to face me, relieved that there was something they could say without betraying my mother’s instructions.
“She is alive!” they exclaimed together, their eyes wide. Using their knuckles to smudge away their tears, they smiled at me.
“We will make hot water and wash you.” Dum reached down beside the stove for an empty four-gallon paraffin tin from which the top had been cut; the edges had been hammered flat and a wire handle added, to turn it into a container for hot water.
“See, the water comes to us along an iron snake which comes into the house,” Dee said, moving over to the sink and turning on the tap.
“I am too old to be washed by silly girls,” I said indignantly. “Put on the water and I will bathe myself.” Apart from wiping my face and hands with a damp flannel, I hadn’t really washed since the shower with Hoppie at Gravelotte.
The girls showed me a small room off the back stoep in which stood an old tin bath. Carrying the paraffin tin between them, they poured the scalding water into the bath. Then they fought over who should turn on the cold tap over the tub. Dum won and D
ee, pretending to sulk, left the bathroom. She returned shortly with a clean shirt and pair of khaki shorts. I ordered them both to leave the room. Giggling their heads off, they jostled each other out.
That was a bath and a half, I can tell you. It soaked a lot of misery away. The thought that Nanny was still alive cheered me considerably and made the task of asking my mother about her a lot easier.
After breakfast my mother retired to her sewing room and several women turned up to see her. I could hear her talking to them about clothes. When I questioned the maids about this, they said, “The missus has become a maker of garments for other missus who come all the time to be fitted.” On the farm my mother had often been busy making things on her Singer machine, and had always made my granpa’s and my clothes. Now she seemed to be doing it for other people as well.
Apart from a garden boy who came in to help my granpa, Dum and Dee were our only servants. They cleaned, scrubbed, polished, did the washing and prepared most of the food, though my mother did the cooking and the general bossing around like always. The maids slept in a small room built onto the garden shed.
Later I was to realize that making enough to get by was a pretty precarious business in the little household. My granpa sold young rose trees and my mother worked all day and sometimes long into the night as a dressmaker. Between making dresses and serving the Lord she didn’t have much time for anything else.
After lunch I gathered up enough courage to venture into my mother’s sewing room. Dee had given me a cup of tea to take in.
My mother looked up and smiled as I entered. “I was just thinking to myself, I would die for a cup of tea, and here you are,” she said. She poured the spilt tea in the saucer back into the cup and then took a sip, closing her eyes. “Heaven, it’s pure heaven. There’s nothing like a good cup of tea.” She sounded just like she used to before she went away. For a moment I thought all the carry-on with Pastor Mulvery was exaggerated in my mind because I knew I had been very tired. “Come in for a bit of a chat, have you? You must have so much to tell me about your school and the nice little friends you made.” She leaned over and kissed me on the top of the head. “I tell you what. Tonight, after supper, when your grandfather listens to the wireless, we’ll sit in the kitchen and have a good old chin-wag. You can tell me all about it. I’m dying to hear, really. Dr. Henny wrote to say you’d got into some sort of scrape with your ear. Is that all right now?” I nodded and she continued, “I’m better now, quite better. The Lord reached down and touched me and I was healed.” She took a sip from her cup.
“Mother, where is Nanny?” I asked, unable to contain myself any longer. There was a long pause and my mother took another sip and looked down into her lap.
Finally she looked up at me and said sweetly, “Why, darling, your nanny has gone back to Zululand.”
“Did you send her there, Mother?” My voice was on the edge of tears.
“I prayed and the Lord guided me in my decision.” She put down her cup and fed a piece of material under the needle, brought the tension foot down and, feeding the cloth skillfully through her fingers, zizzed away with the electric motor. Lifting the tension foot, she snipped the thread and looked down at me. “I tried to bring her to the Lord but she hardened her heart against Him.” She looked up at the ceiling as though asking for confirmation. “I can’t tell you the nights I spent on my knees asking for guidance.” She looked down at me again. “Your nanny would not remove her heathen charms and amulets and she insisted on wearing her bangles and ankle rings. I prayed and prayed and then the Lord sent me a sign I was looking for. Your grandfather told me about the visit of that awful old witch doctor and that it had been at your nanny’s instigation.” Her face grew angry. “That disgusting, evil old man was tampering with the mind of my five-year-old son! How could I let a black heathen woman riddled with superstition bring up my only son?” She picked up her cup and took a polite sip. “Your nanny was possessed by the devil,” she said finally.
I stood looking directly at my mother. “The Lord is a shithead!” I shouted, and rushed from the room.
I ran through the Alice in Wonderland tunnels and under the mulberry trees to the freedom of the hill, my sobs making it difficult to climb. At last I reached the safety of the large boulder and allowed myself a good bawl.
The fierce afternoon sun beat down, and below me the town baked in the heat. When was it all going to stop? Was life about losing the things we love the most, as my granpa had said? Couldn’t things just stay the same for a little while until I grew up and understood the way they worked? Why did you have to wear camouflage all the time? The only person I had ever known who didn’t need any camouflage was Nanny. She laughed and cried and wondered and loved and never told a thing the way it wasn’t. I would write her a letter and send her my ten-shilling note; then she would know I loved her. Granpa would know how to do that.
I sat on the big rock on my hill until the sun began to set over the bushveld. I will have to become a new sort of person, I thought to myself; the old one wasn’t managing life very well. But I couldn’t think what sort of a person I’d have to become so that I would understand the things happening around me. It seemed to me that just as you got the hang of things in life they changed, each time for the worse, and you were left just feeling alone and not knowing what to do about anything.
EIGHT
“It is a fine sunset, ja? Always here is the best place.” I looked behind me, and there was a thin, tall man, much taller than my granpa. He wore a battered old bush hat and his snowy hair hung down to the top of his shoulders. His face was clean-shaven, wrinkled and deeply tanned, while his eyes were an intense blue and seemed too young for his face. He wore khaki overalls without a shirt and his arms and chest were also tanned. The legs of his overalls, beginning just below the knees, were swirled in puttees that wound down into socks rolled over the tops of a pair of hiking boots. Strapped to his back was a large canvas bag from which, rising three feet into the air directly behind his head, was a cactus, spines of long, dangerous thorns protruding from its dark green skin. Cupped in his left hand he held a camera.
“You must excuse me, please, I have taken your picture. At other times I would not do such a thing. It is not polite. It was your expression. Ja, it is always the expression that is important. You have some problems I think, ja?”
At the sound of his voice I had stood up hastily, looking down at him from the rock, a good six feet higher than where he stood. He made a gesture at me and the rock and the sky beyond.
“I shall call it Boy on a Rock. I think this is a good name. I have your permission, yes?” I nodded and he seemed pleased. Dropping the camera so that it hung around his neck by its leather strap, he extended his right hand up toward me. He was much too far away for our hands to meet but I stuck mine out too and we both shook the air in front of us. This seemed a perfectly satisfactory introduction. “Von Vollensteen, Professor Von Vollensteen.” He gave me a stiff little bow from the waist.
“Peekay,” I said.
“Peekay? P-e-e-k-a-y, I like this name, it has a proper sound. I think a name like this would be good for a musician.” He squinted up at me, then took a sharp intake of breath as though he had reached an important decision. “I think we can be friends, Peekay.”
“Why aren’t the thorns from that cactus sticking into your back?” The canvas bag was too lightly constructed to protect him.
“Ha! This is a goot question, Peekay. I will give you one chance to think of the answer; then you must pay a forfeit.”
“You first took off all the thorns on the part that’s in the bag.”
“Ja, this is possible, also a very goot answer”—he shook his head slowly—“but not true. Peekay, I am sorry to say you owe me a forfeit and then you must try again for the answer. Now let me see … Ja! I know what we shall do. You must put your hands like so”—he placed his hands on his hips—“at once we will stand on one leg and say, ‘No matter what has happened bad, to
day I’m finished from being sad. Absoloodle!’ ”
I stood on the rock, balanced on one leg with my hands on my hips, but each time I tried to say the words the laughter would bubble from me and I’d lose my balance. Soon we were both laughing fit to burst. Me on the rock and Professor Von Vollensteen dancing below me on the ground, the cactus clinging like a green papoose to his back. I could get the first part all right, but the “Absoloodle!” at the end proved too much and I would topple, overcome by mirth.
Spent with laughter, Professor Von Vollensteen finally sat down, and taking a red bandanna from the pocket of his overalls, wiped his eyes. “My English is not so goot, ja?” He beckoned me to come down and sit beside him. “Come, no more forfeiting, too dangerous, perhaps I die laughing next time. I will show you the secret. But first you must introduce yourself to my prickly green friend who has a free ride on my back.”
I scrambled down and came to stand beside him. “Peekay, this is Euphorbia grandicornis. He is a very shy cactus and very hard to find in these parts.”
“Hello,” I said to the cactus, not knowing what else to say.
“Goot, now you can see why Mr. Euphorbia grandicornis does not scratch my back.” I walked behind him. The part of the bag resting on Professor Von Vollensteen’s back was made of leather too thick for the long thorns to penetrate. “Not so stupid, ha?” he said with a grin.
“Aaw! If you’d given me another chance I would’ve got it,” I said.
“Ja, for sure! It is always easy to be a schmarty pantz when you know already the trick.”
“Honest, Mr. Professor Von Vollensteen, I think I could’ve known the answer,” I said, convincing myself.
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