‘Hmm.’
Marion laced her fingers. ‘What were you going to say?’
‘How are you feeling?’ Which hadn’t been what Hortensia had wanted to say, either. The question seemed to surprise Marion as well.
‘I’m fine. My neck hurts. You?’
‘Everything hurts after a certain age. Dr Mama told me that, but he said it in such a way that it sounded funny.’
Marion smiled. She had something to say.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot. Oh God!’ she covered her face with her hand.
‘What now?’
‘I’m going to cry and you’ll be upset with me.’
‘Why are you going to cry?’ Hortensia felt her body move between impatience and compassion; she settled somewhere in the middle.
‘Because I am ashamed.’
‘Okay.’ She moved towards practicality. ‘You cry, Marion. I’ll make us some coffee. Did you notice this beautiful piece of machinery in my kitchen – ordered it, flown in specially, delivered yesterday. It’s a Blumenthal. Just you wait.’
‘How do you do it?’ Marion emptied her nostrils into a handkerchief.
‘Do what?’ She assembled two espresso cups on the counter.
‘Keep it all together.’
Hortensia liked to press the buttons; such a simple transaction: push some buttons and make delicious coffee. ‘I don’t keep anything together. I lost everything long ago, I don’t have anything left to keep together.’ She put one steaming cup in front of Marion, took a sip from the other. ‘That’s how I do it.’
‘Good coffee.’
‘Excellent, you mean.’
They sat like that. Somewhere in the house a vacuum cleaner started up.
‘Did you know, I was born in District 6. Did you know that?’
Hortensia shook her head.
‘I don’t remember it really, my parents moved the next year. To Wynberg. Then we moved to Plumstead – we kept creeping southwards.’ She took in the coffee aroma. ‘I wish old age would make me senile. I wish to really forget. I was just now thinking, remembering. Before he died, my father used to do this thing. They were divorced by then, my parents. And old. I’d arranged for them to stay at the home, full of Jews, the people they’d spent their lives avoiding, but they bore it. A decent enough place. So I’d visit every Sunday and we’d all three have breakfast. And my father would do this thing with the newspapers. It never really hit me before. I thought he was just losing it a bit. We’d all be sitting, and Father would start reading out a few headlines from articles in the Cape Times … or was it the Argus? I can’t remember. He’d say – my father had a really deep voice – you know he’d be reading to himself and then suddenly he’d shout out something, like So-and-so backs colour bar in factories or Challenge to Nats to keep South Africa white. He’d say Police out as rebellious miners protest, such-and-such street disturbed by gunfire, and on and on. Thing is, this was the early Nineties – these weren’t the actual headlines. He was making them up, remembering, perhaps, from days gone. He spoke in a certain tone. As if trying to make a point maybe. Trying to say, look at what we called a country … Just look.’
Hortensia stretched her legs, leaned forward on the chair to massage the length of them. She had to keep her blood moving, otherwise she feared she would not be able to stand up. Ever.
‘Just blurting that stuff out. Like he was calling up the ghost of something, of apartheid. Saying … or rather feeling sorry. I think so, anyway. I remember now that my mother would get upset and ask him to stop. Maybe one or two would be violent-sounding. Please, my mother would say, and my father would stop but do the same thing the following Sunday. Such a feeble thing, you know, but I started thinking: maybe he was trying … I really like to hope that he was trying.’ Her eyes glistened.
Hortensia said nothing. Her fingers massaged her leg.
‘We were able to move southwards because my father did well with the shop. Trading in jewellery. A cousin would have the right contacts, a shipment would come in. I don’t know – I didn’t pay attention much. In 1951 we moved to Constantia; the house wasn’t large, but the address was right – we’d made it. Alberta came to work for us. Her name was really Bathandwa, but my mother asked if we could call her Alberta; she liked the name, although she never explained why. Bathandwa seemed to agree.’
It happened so long ago that Marion had taught herself to think of it as something she’d once read in a book. Bathandwa had been older than Marion, mid-twenties or so. The regular cleaner of the Baumann household, Hettie, had died the year before, sick with tuberculosis in a hospital for blacks with not enough medicines, no beds. Marion was at first surprised at how young Bathandwa was. And then she was surprised by Bathandwa’s ragged ear, an ear that looked as if a dog had tried to turn it into lunch. She never found the courage to ask Bathandwa what had happened to her ear.
There was a period when the Smiths next door had no one and asked Mrs Baumann if they could borrow her girl, Alberta. For two weeks she shared her time between the Baumanns and the Smiths, and then Marion never saw her again.
One day Alberta was taking out the washing, she passed Marion in the hallway and asked if she knew that Mrs Smith next door had only nine toes, and did Marion know what had happened to the pinkie on her left foot? And that the nail on Mr Smith’s ring-finger was rotten – soon he’ll have no nail. Whitlow. Alberta said Marion’s mother had rings on her neck, red welts: did Marion know how they got there, did she notice how they came and went? So-and-so had a wooden leg from an accident at the border. So-and-so drank, her liver was finished. On it went, an inventory of scars. It made Marion, who never said anything in response, uncomfortable, but the passing remarks became a ritual of Alberta’s. Once, Marion went into the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. Did you know, Alberta started, glancing over her shoulder as she stood at the sink, that Mr and Mrs Smith couldn’t fuck? He had no cock, she no pussy. ‘The children are borrowed, gifts from the gods who take pity on the weak.’
Marion had been friendly with the Smith girls, and frequently went round for tea. One day she was over at the Smiths’, eating crackers and Marmite with her friends. A commotion deeper within the house, the sound of a loud banging and Mr Smith shouting, made the girls get up and run to where his voice was coming from.
‘Dad, what’s going on?’ one of the Smith girls asked.
‘Alberta was in the bathroom.’
‘I was just cleaning up. I’ve finished work, Sir. I’m going home now.’
Bathandwa was dressed in dark-blue jeans and a red fitted top. Marion noticed the more familiar powder-blue uniform poking from the tote bag Bathandwa carried.
‘Why are you wearing my wife’s earrings? Give them.’
‘These are my own earrings, Sir.’
Slender things speckled with diamantés, dangling and almost touching her bare shoulders.
‘Nonsense. You think I’m stupid? Give.’
They all stood frozen in the passageway. Marion and the Smith girls tried to get a good look at Bathandwa, but the mass of Mr Smith was blocking most of their view.
‘But they are mine, Sir.’
His hands shot through the space and slapped her cheek.
‘And the shoes as well,’ he said.
They were new shoes, heels Bathandwa had bragged about to Marion earlier in the week.
‘Take them off.’
Mr Smith stripped the girl who cleaned his house. Near the end, when she was almost naked, he said, ‘And what’s that smell? Who told you you could use my wife’s perfume?’
Afterwards, no one spoke about it. Mrs Smith came home and raised only an eyebrow when Mr Smith told her he’d caught the girl stealing. He handed his wife the things that wouldn’t fit, shoes that were not to her liking. The Smiths finally got their own maid and the Baumanns found someone new as well. Before the woman could tell them her name, they asked if they could call her Alberta.
‘Apartheid happened, you see? Hortensi
a?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘All those things happened and I didn’t do anything about them.’
Hortensia noted a smell in the air. Sweat and face cream.
‘Even when it happened right underneath my nose I did nothing. I walked past people and didn’t see them. I blanked out an entire population, a history. I still do. You know Agnes, you know she once asked me whether I thought she was too old to finish her matric? Gosh, it was years ago now. The kids were all born, Agnes would have been – can’t remember – in her forties maybe. And she said one day … I don’t know, she was washing the dishes and I was asking why she didn’t just use the dishwasher. I was always chiding her like that. Why, after many explanations, did she still not use my appliances properly, still not get how to fold a wet towel, how to fold a fitted sheet. Anyway she asked me if I thought she should go back and study, told me how she had always wanted to be a teacher. Know what I told her? I told her it was … I said to her that it was too late.’ Speaking this out loud made Marion catch her breath. ‘You say I’m a hypocrite. I have to be. I have to pretend it happened somewhere else; that I read it in a book. I would not be able to get out of bed otherwise.’
Marion bent her head down, turned it away. She cried for not long, then she smoothed out her skirt that never needed any smoothing and stood up, left the kitchen.
The Constantiaberg Bulletin covered a story about the case: ‘Last attempts to reach an out-of-court settlement in Katterijn land claim.’
The Samsodiens had rejected an offer from the State based on the consumer-price index for translating past loss into present-day value. The solution that now seemed the most probable was for the State to apportion state-owned land (within a certain mile radius of the contested land) out to the Samsodiens. It looked like the Von Struikers would get to keep their farm and the Samsodiens receive a portion of the Koppie as fair compensation. Talks were being held.
‘Well.’
‘Why doesn’t it feel like a solution?’
‘What do you mean?’ Hortensia asked. She put the Bulletin down, collected her glass of lemonade. They’d taken, sometimes, to sitting in the lounge together. Tripped into the habit.
‘The Von Struikers don’t actually have to do anything. Doesn’t seem fair.’
‘I think “fair” has been lost and forgotten for a while now. Besides, who are you to say what is fair or not? When the Samsodiens move in … or whoever, go over and ask them. Was it fair? Do you feel compensated? Is all forgiven?’
Marion was quiet. Hortensia started searching for the remote control. She ambled about without her walker. She wasn’t supposed to, but she hoped if she acted like she didn’t need one she eventually wouldn’t. She found it underneath a decor magazine, started clicking.
‘One of the … a grandmother, a Samsodien grandmother died. Not died, well, died but … hanged herself. After everything, after the move and the family trying to settle … with a belt.’
Hortensia stopped chopping channels. She thought of being at a set of traffic lights. Waiting for cars to pass.
‘She was our age, Hortensia. Could you … I mean, I couldn’t. What would she have been thinking? How could she have felt?’
Hortensia turned the television off and set the remote aside. She blew air from her cheeks.
‘I suppose there are so many like that. I suppose you think I’m stupid or ridiculous.’
Hortensia frowned. ‘We had a guest once. Not someone we knew well, but a friend of Zippy’s whom she asked us to host. Maria-Louisa was her name, Florentine woman. Of course Cape Town is accustomed to being fawned upon. Maria hated it. We took her along Beach Road. Camps Bay, Bantry Bay – the whole toot. The vineyards. Lovely, lovely, she said, but there is something I cannot abide. She cut her trip short. Now,’ Hortensia sat back, pleased with how much she’d captured Marion’s attention. ‘That’s not something that happens often, but it does happen. And weeks later I called Zippy to find out what it was all about. She said Maria had … Now you have to understand her English is alright, but not brilliant – Maria’s, I’m talking about. Well, Zippy confessed that she wasn’t sure she’d understood it all but, apparently, Maria had ‘struggled’. That was the word she’d used. The best Zippy could get out of her was how she’d never felt so white before. And so special for being white. Mi ha fatto male, she’d said. It made her sick.’
Marion’s face was drawn.
‘Of course there should have been enough in her own European history to make her want to throw up. She shouldn’t have had to come to South Africa for that, but all the same … Discomfort, Marion. If you want to look and look honestly, then prepare for discomfort. To be sick. I met a woman once. A white woman. “I feel terrible” she said. “Rotten.” That’s no good, I thought. What she ought to feel is responsible. But then again, look at me … I can’t preach … I’m not brave, myself. I’m a coward. I looked away as much as possible.’
‘Did you do anything wrong, though? It doesn’t sound like it to me. Your husband broke his vows.’
‘After everything died down. The affair ended and we just carried on, tolerating each other. That’s a sort of crime, don’t you think? I took his life. And I squandered my own.’
Marion looked sad, but Hortensia was relieved to see that she was not crying.
‘You and Max. You fell pregnant easily? Just like that?’
‘I’m sorry, Hortensia.’
‘I’m asking.’
‘Yes. Yes, we did.’
‘I did get pregnant, you know. Just couldn’t keep hold of them.’
Marion thought to seek out Hortensia’s hand, surprised at how little it was, how delicate and lined. She thought Hortensia might pull away, but she didn’t.
‘The first time was different, though. I didn’t tell Peter the first time. We’d been married barely a year. House of Braithwaite was up and running, a real success. I was busy and I was happy. And when I realised I was pregnant I didn’t tell Peter.’
Marion felt that bony hand squeeze hers.
‘You ever have clear moments, Marion? Conviction. You ever have that? The first time I conceived a child I had this force, this clarity that I had to be rid of it. And once I had that clarity, everything else was easy. I could lie. I could find the money. I found a place.’
‘Hortensia, I—’
‘Wait. Nobody knew where I was. You know how lonely that is. My mother and Zippy. Peter. It was easy to name some design exposition. I mean, they were happy for me and all the attention, but they weren’t keeping up with where I ought to be and when. I took the money from my business and went away for a week.’
‘How—’
‘I don’t remember anything,’ Hortensia said, looking at Marion in a way that made it clear that the exact opposite was true. A few seconds of terror in her eyes when she stopped looking like Hortensia and looked like some other person entirely. ‘When I returned, Peter was home. I’d complained some time back that he wasn’t taking me seriously. Wasn’t taking my work to heart. And I came home and all I wanted to do was lie down under two or three blankets. I wanted something heavy on top of me, something that could cover me. But he wanted to see what I’d exhibited. I pulled out some designs I had and he wanted me to talk about them. He pored over the work, asking questions. All I wanted to do was lie down with a blanket over my head.’
And years later when the pregnancies, one after another, poured through her body, Hortensia would torture herself with the notion that she had brought this upon herself. In the days when they still lamented together, she would always know that her lament was different to Peter’s and each new time she would hate that distance, hate him, hate herself more.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘And someone was laughing at me. Someone was saying: “You see?” Taunting me.’
Marion shook her head.
‘I felt I had to fight that. Each time I didn’t carry to term, if I didn’t fight that voice I would just have got smal
ler and smaller until I disappeared altogether.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Each new time, each failure, I felt the anger coming. You know how tough you have to be? To fight a voice in your own head. I couldn’t let anyone else see, but when I was alone I’d bang my fist. Against a hard surface. For the pain. I don’t want to let him off the hook, but sometimes I think: maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why he took up with someone else. It was easier than coming home to me.’
‘Hortensia.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, I know he was a selfish bastard. There’s no escaping that, but sometimes I think perhaps I gave him a good excuse.’
It had started to rain outside.
‘And you know what? You know, I didn’t really want children. Not really anyway. Not until just that moment when I realised I would never have any.’
The following day Marion, brave, ventured.
‘I know it’s not my place … but do you suppose the things are connected, the—’
‘What things?’
‘You … the … children you didn’t have,’ she whispered. ‘And Beulah’s request – about her grandmother, to be buried near her dead babies. Do you suppose?’
‘You—’
‘Hortensia, I don’t want for you to get upset. I’m coming … in peace, I’m coming because, well, we’ve been talking a bit and you said that, and I suddenly thought maybe I understood.’
Marion waited, her heart beating fast. The woman stayed sitting up in bed, a magazine open in her lap, her back pressed against the headboard.
‘Do you suppose you’re angry at Beulah and even … Oh, what’s the grandmother’s name, Annamarie? Everything about what Beulah is asking has to do with family and love and children – lots and lots of children, some dead, yes, miscarried; but some that survived.’
Hortensia was staring at Marion, boring through her, but Marion continued.
‘I know I’m the last person to have an opinion, but why say no to her request? Why, really?’
After some seconds Hortensia spoke. ‘I don’t owe her anything.’ What she was thinking, though, was: I have no peace, why should she?
The Woman Next Door Page 19