by Andre Brink
5
AND THEN HE is there. A car stops beside a flower-bed – the brazen yellows and oranges of Cape marigolds – and two men come across the lawn towards us. One is a stranger, a trim, relaxed man with a scar on his forehead and white-rimmed spectacles. It must be Mongane Yaya. The other is Sandile. Thinner than I remembered him, and older, quite alarmingly so. His jacket is draped over one shoulder and he has loosened his tie.
Halfway across the lawn he stops. How well I know that perplexed little frown between his eyes.
‘Kristien!’ he exclaims.
My face has gone numb. I mouth something as Sam introduces me to Mongane. When he turns to Sandile and says, ‘You two know each other, I believe?’ I start laughing uncontrollably. He embraces me. And all I can think of saying is, ‘You still use the same aftershave.’
The next ten minutes or so is a senseless jumble. We agree – that much I gather – that the group, or at least some of them, will pay a visit to the farm in the late afternoon to see Ouma, if she is strong enough to receive them. The rest is a blur. It is only Sandile’s face I am conscious of – so much older, stamped with a weariness that shows through the vivaciousness on the surface, his hair speckled curiously with grey.
And then the others drive off and we are left alone. It seems they have agreed that Sandile would drive me home.
‘Is it really you?’ he asks as he gets in next to me.
‘I thought you’d never come,’ I say stupidly. ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting.’
‘Did you know I was coming?’
‘Yes. But I told them to keep it a surprise. Now we’ve lost two hours.’
‘You should have let me know.’
‘I always do the wrong thing.’
‘Don’t say that.’ He puts his hand on mine. An electrical current thrills through my body. ‘I didn’t know you were back too,’ he says.
‘I’m not.’ I try to explain; the effort helps me to compose myself.
‘I never realised the injured woman was your grandmother,’ he says. ‘If I’d known –’
‘No need to apologise.’ As he turns the ignition key I lean my head against his shoulder. ‘How much time do we have?’
‘Not much. We have meetings and consultations all day. But perhaps you can come to the meeting tonight? In the city hall, at eight. And afterwards, maybe –’
‘Of course. I’ll be there.’ I start giving him directions to get out of town, on the road to The Bird Place.
‘All these years,’ he says.
I suddenly feel like shaking him. Jesus, we have so little time; can’t we break through the small-talk, the obvious little nothings – sweet nothing, my Lord – the tussle with inanities?
‘You’ve aged,’ I tell him, which is not at all what I meant to say. ‘You look exhausted.’
‘It’s not been easy, being back.’ A tense smile; behind the lines I briefly recognise the face I loved. ‘But it’s worth while. Every moment of it. And next week –’
‘Let’s not talk about politics now.’
‘You forget that my life is politics.’
I’m stung by the gentle reprimand; but of course he’s right. ‘Even so,’ I say, ‘you have to look after yourself. In an attempt at lightheartedness – or is it a disingenuous move to go straight to what really matters? – I say, ‘I’ll have to tell Nozipho to keep a tighter rein on you.’
A shadow moves across his face. ‘She’s no longer with me, Kristien.’
I stare at him.
‘We’ve split up.’
‘But why –? when –? You were so …’
‘Coming back is not for free, you know. There’s a price-tag.’ He stares fixedly ahead. I can see the tension in his knuckles on the steering-wheel.
‘But the two of you were so close,’ I protest. ‘I thought nothing could ever …’
It is a while before he says, without looking at me, ‘One lives in exile for years and years. The thing that keeps you going is this place. The memories, the hopes, the expectations. And then you come back and nothing is really like you thought it would be.’
‘But you were always so realistic about it. You used to warn everybody not to expect too much …’
‘It’s the small things that catch you unprepared. The big issues one can cope with.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m not sure I do either.’ He glances at me. ‘To begin with, Nozipho had to give up her job to come back. A very good job she’d just settled into. She tried her best to cover up but I knew how hard it was. So all the feelings of guilt and resentment began. And then the kids –’
‘Weren’t they glad to come home?’
‘To them this isn’t home, remember. They were used to living in the States, they’re young Americans, they have no roots here.’ A wry smile. ‘They can’t even speak Xhosa. Soon everything just got out of hand. Choosing a school. We couldn’t face the idea of exposing them to the horrors of black education. But a posh private school didn’t seem right either. I mean, we are supposed to be freedom fighters. And then we had to buy a house. Where? In a black township with the ordinary, deprived people I’d come back to be with – or in a white suburb where Nozipho could lead a better life and the kids would feel at home? Before we knew where we were we’d drifted so far apart that it became irreparable. And even while I saw it happening I couldn’t really do anything to save us: there were so many other urgent things to attend to, every hour of every day; so many people who needed help and advice and God knows what else.’
‘I think I can understand,’ I say. ‘Even if I don’t approve.’ I touch his elbow. ‘Turn right here.’
‘And those gates?’ he exclaims. ‘Jesus, where are you taking me?’
‘Aren’t they something?’ I laugh. ‘When I was a child I always thought they were the gates of paradise.’
‘Of hell, more likely,’ he mocks. ‘Abandon ye all hope.’
A single barn-owl descends on the bonnet, staring straight at us through drooping yellow eyelids.
Sandile slams on the brakes. ‘What’s this?’ he exclaims.
‘One of my grandmother’s pets.’
‘In broad daylight?’
‘One gets used to it.’
He looks at me suspiciously, and drives on, pulls in under the trees and stares at the half-obscured palace in utter disbelief. ‘You live here?’ he asks.
‘Would you like to come in?’
‘Sorry, Kristien. They’ll be waiting for me.’ The engine is still running.
I can’t believe it. I think: I haven’t seen him for five years. I look in his eyes. I try to keep my voice steady. ‘This is why you lost Nozipho,’ I say quietly.
He looks back at me. For a long time he is silent. At last he says, ‘I’ve paid the price. Now I’ve got to make it work. Otherwise it would have been all in vain. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Isn’t this exactly what Thando said an hour ago?
‘I suppose I can,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sure I want to.’ His face is so close our noses almost touch. For the moment, all feeling is suspended. I know it will hit me later. Right now I am almost relieved.
‘I’ll see you tonight,’ he says.
I shake my head slowly. ‘I’m sorry. Actually I can’t. I have to look after Ouma.’
‘Surely you can arrange for a sitter?’
‘No. She counts on me. We have an arrangement.’
He comes round to open my door. For a moment we stand together. He hugs me quietly and kisses me. I know he is crying, but pretend not to notice.
Moments later he drives off. The owl is still perched on the bonnet, as if to make sure he won’t turn back.
6
OUMA IS SLEEPING, restless, her mouth open, making a gargling sound. It remains unsettling to see her like that, in the coffin. The nurse looks up briefly, shrugs, resumes reading. Trui, it seems, has gone home. I have the house to myself. It is the hour of the idiots again.
&
nbsp; I need to think. I also need to be busy. I must not think about Sandile now. There is the rest of Ouma’s life to dispose of; it should occupy the hands if not the mind. Relieved at having found something to do, I go to the secret room and collect as many of the bundles as I can manage. I carry them to a clearing behind the graveyard, well out of sight of both the palace and the labourers’ houses. What I’ll do is to pile them all in one big heap, then cover them with firewood from the neat stack behind the house, and set fire to everything at once. From the whitewashed wall of the graveyard the peacock keeps watch; it must be his favourite perch, this bird of death bearing the evil eye on his tail. Four, five, six times I make the journey to and fro. Then I stack the wood. I light a cigarette. I prepare to light the fire, but am stopped by the dire shriek uttered by the peacock from its observation post.
‘Shut up!’ I shout at it, and immediately feel foolish.
In response it fans out its magical tail and begins to strut along the wall.
As I bend over to resume my pyrotechnics there is a whirring sound, as if in response to the peacock’s shriek, and when I look up I see a great multicoloured cloud descending. It’s the birds, even more of them than I have seen before, covering the sky; then, like the funnel of a tornado, diving down towards me. I hunch down to protect myself. This is pure Hitchcock. But as it turns out they have no interest in me. They swish right past me, mere centimetres from my body, hurling themselves at the pyre. There are so many of them that it takes a while before I realise what has been happening. The chopped chunks of wood lie scattered all around me. Some shreds of the paper bags remain, stirring in the wake of the unfurling wave of birds; the rest has disappeared. They have picked up every pad and rag there was. High above, very high, already far away, and travelling farther at it seems ever-increasing speed, the great cloud disappears, dissolving into air, into thin air.
On the graveyard wall the peacock has drawn in its tail. Emitting once more its eerie cry it begins to flap its wings, gathering momentum before it, too, flies up, past the house, beyond the surrounding trees, gone. An uncanny silence descends upon the place.
Meticulous, like a nun at her devotions, I gather the scattered lengths of wood and return them to their original pile. I heave myself on to the graveyard wall and settle on the peacock’s perch. It is very still; one can almost hear the sun. In an inexplicable way my mind feels cleared.
I think: At last I have seen Sandile. For the last few days everything in me has been directed towards seeing him again; it has blocked out everything else from this day, even the shock of what has happened to Anna; even, temporarily, Ouma. Now he has come, and left again. An anticlimax? Then why am I relieved? What was I expecting anyway? We made our decision very long ago. Our separate lives have continued. That he is now free is ironical, but immaterial; one cannot go back to bodies one has loved and believe all will be the same. He has to lead his life, I mine. If our ways happen to cross, as in this shrinking world it may well happen, it cannot change our courses. I am thirty-three, not twenty-five any more. There are, I hope, many years ahead of me; but the course of my life has changed. I cannot go back. What I need is another kind of freedom, for another kind of choice. Not a revisiting of what has already been decided long ago. He has come; he has gone: that is as it should be.
I go back to the house across the quiet yard; there seems more space now, even if it isn’t empty. And the palace sits on the ground like a huge ship on an unmoving sea, waiting for a current to loosen its moorings, to launch itself, to explore the space ahead.
From a distance I see Trui approaching, tying her apron as she walks. Labourers are spreading out from their homes towards the ostrich camps. Life is resuming where it left off. A car draws up as I reach the kitchen door. It is Mr Jansen, the lawyer; he has brought, he says, his secretary. I take them upstairs to where Ouma has just woken up.
The visitors are taken aback by what they see: I haven’t thought of warning them. But perhaps they are used to the idiosyncracies of the old. Ouma’s evident pleasure at seeing them dispels whatever misgivings they may have had.
The phone rings. I pick it up and take it to my room, indicating to Mr Jansen and his twin-set suited secretary that I’ll be back soon, but Ouma motions me out; she can cope, she says drily.
I hear Michael’s voice. This is unexpected; I am really not prepared for it, not now. After the feeling of release I have just experienced there is, suddenly, an impression of being drawn back into some confinement.
‘You don’t sound glad to hear me,’ he says testily; perhaps we’ve come to know each other too well.
‘It’s not a good day,’ I say.
‘Well, it hasn’t been too good for me either. I lost a footnote and I can’t seem to find it.’
‘Have you looked under the bed?’
‘Don’t be facetious,’ he snarls.
‘Jesus Christ, Michael, there are more important things in the world than a lost fucking footnote.’
‘Have you any idea of what my life is like right now?’
‘Have you any idea of mine?’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Why should you care?’
Nothing is going right, nothing at all. We should have hung up after the first exchange; but being pigheaded, both of us, we blunder on, getting more and more annoyed, more and more vicious – to an eavesdropper like the nurse, I suppose, more and more childish, ridiculous, absurd – until, with perfect synchronisation, we both slam the receivers down. Regretting it instantly; at least I am. But now neither will take the first step for quite a while; it has been the pattern of our relationship. Eventually we’ll make up. I hope. Do I?
I need air. At the same time I am not ready to face the infinity surrounding the house, so I start winding my way through the labyrinth of its passages and byways and dead-ends again, its broken landings and abandoned rooms. Only much later do I remember about our visitors.
They are already leaving. ‘You should have sent for me,’ I tell Ouma.
‘Why? I’m perfectly capable of handling my own business.’
‘Wasn’t there anything to sign, to witness, whatever?’
‘The secretary was here, and the nurse.’
‘What have you decided to do?’
‘It’s a great relief,’ she says. ‘I’ve been worrying about this. Now I can look forward to dying.’
I look hard at her. ‘Ouma Kristina, are you not afraid to die?’
‘Why should I be? I’ve lived among the dead so long.’
‘You are so old,’ I say gently.
‘Age is not a matter of years but of style,’ she says.
I lean over the coffin and take her hand. ‘I’ve done as you asked me,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve destroyed all the evidence.’
The nurse looks up sharply, accusingly.
‘Good. It’s all going exactly as planned.’
‘I must tell you about the birds,’ I say.
‘They helped you, did they? I knew they would.’
Even the owls that used to roost in here, I notice now, have gone.
A car stops outside.
I hurry over to the window. ‘You have more visitors,’ I say. ‘Do you think you can handle it?’
‘Who are they?’
‘Friends of mine.’ (Will Sandile be with them?)
‘Then it’s all right. I’ve never met your friends, you know.’
7
THE GROUP, EXPLAINS Sam Ndzuta when I arrive outside, has had to split once again to catch up with their telescoped programme before tonight’s meeting, so Vusi and Sandile have gone elsewhere with Abel. I feel a brief twinge of – what? Pique, anger, regret? This time he chose to stay away. But after a moment I nod to myself. It was the right decision – for both of us. Composed, I face the guests. Only Nomaza and old Thando have come out with Sam; also Mongane Yaya, who stands a few yards away from the others, staring at the palace in total amazement.
‘I’ve heard of these pla
ces before,’ he says after a while, ‘but I never expected anything like this.’
‘You can understand why people would want to burn it down,’ I comment wryly.
‘You may as well try to burn a dream,’ he answers. ‘Or a nightmare. It won’t go away.’
‘My house was not so fanciful,’ says Thando, ‘but the size must have been the same. Unbelievable. You must have had room for scores of relatives, like us.’
‘It’s empty now,’ I say. ‘We only have ghosts now.’
‘Why the tall foundations?’ he asks.
‘To keep cool in summer, I suppose. And to have a place for the idiots.’ I tell them about the legend of the Little Karoo.
‘Any idiots down there today?’
For a moment I wonder whether he is clairvoyant; but I keep up the banter. ‘I’m afraid nowadays they’re all on the streets, all the time.’
‘That’s the price of democracy,’ says Sam with a straight face.
The front door is still blocked up. I take them round to the back.
‘Very quiet here,’ remarks Thando. ‘No birds in this place?’
‘Not at the moment,’ I say. ‘We’re preparing for a death.’
They look at me, but I don’t answer, invaded suddenly by a grief so profound that my whole body contracts. For two weeks now I’ve been living in the shadow of this impending death, yet somehow it has remained unbelievable. Now, shaken by all that has happened today, it unfurls itself like a wave and I have no defence. Without saying a word Thando puts an arm round my shoulders. I press myself against him and burst into tears, wholly letting go, in a passion and a desolation such as I haven’t felt in years.
‘That’s right, my child,’ he says in a low soothing voice. ‘That’s right. Don’t hold it back. You need this. We all do.’
I don’t know where the others are. It doesn’t matter. This is where I want to be, have had to be, for so long. Weeping – not hysterically, but in a steady uncontrollable flood – I hold on to him as if I’m drowning, enveloped by his large good body, encouraged by his voice and the hands stroking my hair. I weep for Ouma Kristina, for my dead parents, for all the women behind me and around me, resuscitated in Ouma’s stories and accepted now as part of myself; I weep for my dead child, and for the lovers I have lost, for Michael; I weep for Anna and her misery, for Lenie with her new bra and the blithe ignorance of little Nannie; I weep for Sandile and for Nozipho and those like them; I weep for the children who set fire to this place, for Jacob Bonthuys down in the cellar among the stars, for Langenhoven and the girl who lived with the monster Brolloks, and for Loeloeraai, for Trui and her family: I weep for the living and the dead, for the mess we have made of this land, for the immeasurable sadness of the world, for the birds that have gone, for the spilt blood of women through all the ages, I weep, I weep.