by Fred Khumalo
‘Yes, madame.’
‘But don’t let anybody mislead you, you’re like me, part of the French Huguenot people, always resilient, always forward-looking, always brave.’
‘Yes, madame.’
‘You make me proud.’
‘Thank you, madame.’
‘Come, let me show you something.’
She sat him down on the organ stool and positioned his fingers on the keyboard. She cupped his hands, guiding them along the keyboard, and together they played the opening bars of Handel’s Hallelujah.
Pitso was breathing heavily, not necessarily from his exertions on the organ, but from the pressure of Madame Clinquemeur’s breasts pressing against his shoulder blades. He leaned as far forward as he could to avoid their rubbing against his back.
‘Isn’t that exquisite?’
‘Yes,’ he croaked. ‘It is beautiful.’
Without thinking, he turned to her and wrapped his hands around the back of her neck, drawing her face towards his in readiness to kiss her.
She reared back. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She pushed him with such force that he fell off the organ stool. On getting up, he fled the room, the door swinging violently behind him.
What had he done? Surely his teacher would report him to the authorities and he would be severely punished. Or forced to leave the facility. What would he do if they expelled him? He considered running to his uncle’s house, but thought better of it. After creeping into bed, he lay frozen in fear and guilt. Tears of regret gushed out of his eyes and he sobbed silently. Eventually, spent from emotion, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
The following day, he expected to be summoned to the principal’s office. But nothing happened. At lunch time, he was sitting with a group of friends under a tree when he saw Madame Clinquemeur approaching. He leaped away like a rabbit and fled. Over the next two days, he did his best avoid her and stopped going to music practice. But one evening, as he was walking to the dormitory, she appeared out of nowhere.
‘Hello, Roelof.’ Before he could respond, she said, ‘Please come with me.’
He thought of running, but changed his mind, and followed her as she walked towards the music room.
When they got there, she lit the paraffin lamp. She instructed him to sit on the organ stool and then sat down opposite him on a chair.
‘Roelof, I’ve been thinking about what happened the other night. And I suppose you, too, have had occasion to think about it, no?’
‘Yes, I have thought about it a great deal, madame. I cannot find words to express my sincere apology. I do not know what got into me.’
‘It’s not your fault, my boy. I can see you are lonely. Everyone gets lonely every now and then. But you must learn to control your emotions, otherwise you will find yourself in trouble. I have not told anyone about what happened. Mainly because I do not want to see you fail, not after what you’ve been through in your life.’
Relief flooded through Roelof. ‘Yes, madame … Thank you for your kindness and consideration.’
‘As I say, you must learn to control yourself. I know as a young man your blood is boiling with uncontrollable urges. But you’re a danger to yourself. One day you will do to the wrong person what you did to me. And you can imagine what the consequences of that will be.’
Pitso shuddered.
‘They’ll expel you from this lovely place, where you stand a real chance of making something of yourself. Is that what you want, to be forced to leave this place?’
‘No, madame.’ Pitso was trembling now, blinking repeatedly to stop himself from crying. He couldn’t cry in front of anyone. Especially not her.
She pulled her chair forward. ‘You need to take charge of your life, control your urges.’ She touched his face lightly with her right hand. Her expression softened. ‘You have so much going for you, Roelof.’
He could smell her sweat beneath the sweet scent that she always carried on her person.
‘Thank you for forgiving me, madame, for not reporting me … May I go back to the dormitory now?’
She did not respond. She appeared to be deep in thought, a conflicted look on her face. Then she inched her chair closer to the organ stool. Their knees touched. She leaned forward. ‘Perhaps I can help you,’ she said.
Their faces were inches apart. She reached for the paraffin lamp and snuffed it out. Pitso gasped as the room was plunged into darkness. His mind was reeling. She guided him to his feet and tried to press her lips to his, but he was too tall. So she slumped on the organ stool and roughly brought him to his knees. She pressed her lips to his and pushed her tongue into his mouth. Meeting no resistance, she probed deeper. In response, he pressed his tongue forward, nervously at first. His tongue gained confidence and assumed a life of its own; it began tussling playfully with hers.
Then she cupped his buttocks in her hands and started kneading them, feeling knots of muscles there. She started unbuckling his belt. He stood up and allowed his pants to drop.
He bit his lips in a desperate attempt to stop himself from crying out as she gripped his manhood as if it were a throwing spear. She shook it roughly from side to side and started tugging at his shaft as if it were an obstinate piece of weed that had to be removed from the ground. He had no choice but to moan.
She shrugged off her dress and removed her underwear, then got down onto the carpeted floor. He’d never been with a woman before, but instinct told him what to do. He positioned himself on top of her, and she guided him into her. When he started rocking fast, she grabbed his hips. ‘Not so fast. Take your time.’ He obeyed. They rocked gently, their murmurs and moans thick in the room.
Spent, he fell into her arms. A few minutes later, he felt his manhood hardening again. He groped between her thighs.
‘Don’t be greedy now.’ She got up quickly, putting her fingers to his lips. ‘Remember: control.’
‘I’m sorry … I’ve never done this before.’
She brushed past him in the darkness. He heard the rustle of fabric as she got herself properly dressed again and prepared to leave the room.
‘Roelof?’ she said, as they stepped into the cool evening.
‘Madame?’
‘Please call me Christine, Roelof.’
‘Please call me Pitso then.’
‘Well, you know what, Pitso?’
‘Yes, Christine?’
‘I … Deus tecum. God be with you.’
She started walking away.
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he called after her. Too late, she had disappeared, a fast-moving wraith in the shadows.
A soft rain began to fall, a welcome respite for Pitso’s body, still hot and sweating from its exertions.
As he eased himself into his bed a short while later, his thoughts were consumed by Christine. He imagined taking her on his voyages over the seas, making sure she was by his side, come what may. He smiled in the darkness.
Then he muttered ‘Deus tecum’ and slowly ran his index finger across his upper lip, below his nose, savouring the smell of Madame Clinquemeur. Christine. Sweet Christine.
CHAPTER 14
A week later, Madame Clinquemeur accosted Pitso as he was trudging home after a long day at the welding workshop.
Her face was crimson, the vein in the middle of her forehead throbbing visibly, her pert lips a pulsating pout. He opened his mouth to greet her. But before he could speak she dragged him behind the workshop and slapped him hard across the face. Tears welled in his eyes. She dragged him further until they were in the middle of the mealie field. The maize was the height of a full-grown man.
‘Madame, what … I mean Christine—’ Before he could finish, she slapped him hard in the face again. She was shorter than him, her head reaching to his shoulder, but the force of her slaps was that of a man almost his size. There was purpose behind those slaps.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she slapped him across the mouth. He could taste blood.
‘How dare you!’ Th
e words were bullets coming out of the muzzle of a gun. ‘How. Could. You?’
‘What have I done?’
She slapped him again, but this time her attack lacked vigour. ‘I risked everything … You lied to me.’
‘What are you talking about?’ He spat onto the ground. His saliva was red with blood.
‘Why are you sleeping with that girl?’
‘What girl?’
‘Don’t make me hit you again. You know, Saartjie. I heard her tell the other kitchen girls what the two of you have been up to. Says you two are getting married soon. Everybody around here is talking about the two of you. What do you take me for? So much for your proclamations of naivety. What—’
‘But, I’m not—’
She pushed him hard in the chest, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks.
He moved to grab her, to stop her from hitting him again, then he checked himself. He searched her face. Her lips quivered. He could see that she was full of questions, that there was a lot she wanted to say. With shock, he realised that this woman really cared about him. She cared for him more than a teacher should care for her pupil. She cared for him more than a mature woman cared for an adventurous boy. Her face exuded a tenderness he’d never been exposed to before. She looked sad. She looked angry. She looked like one whose trust had been betrayed.
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘I’ve never … That’s not true.’ He shook his head, bewildered.
Softening, she embraced him and murmured, ‘Roelof, I mean, Pitso … I … I love you.’
In the days to follow Pitso realised that, unlike in the many books he had read, his love for Christine had not hit him like a bolt of lightning. It had entered his heart with stealth, like a sickness. Then, it had spread to his entire being, so that in every wakeful moment, he could feel the pleasure-pain of this sickness throb with each thud of his heart, an illness he did not want to be cured of.
He wrote poems for her. He serenaded her after choir practice. He eased her into the intricacies of the Sotho language. She reciprocated with more lessons in French. She encouraged him to read more European history, to immerse himself in religious texts. His aptitude for French only encouraged her to escalate the pace and complexity of her lessons in the language. He learned his tables of conjugation, and his skills at composition improved. He was then working on improving his vocabulary.
At weekends, he was a regular presence at her rooms in the staff quarters. To assure the rest of the staff that the visits were innocent, they would leave the main door wide open. In fact, they mostly spent time sitting out on the veranda, the gramophone playing in the background. When she’d arrived, she’d been a hit with everyone who wanted to see the gramophone, this new wonder. She would play her limited collection of records on the contraption, mainly waltz and polka tunes. Pitso himself exulted in the machine and the music.
He asked her one day, ‘Why didn’t you bring recordings of classical music over from Europe?’
‘Oh, my dear Pitso, those recordings are hard to come by. Even if I knew where to get them, I wonder if I could afford them. The gramophone itself is way beyond my pocket. It’s only thanks to Grégoire that I’m the proud owner of this wonder machine.’
‘Who’s this Grégoire? Your brother?’
‘A friend,’ she said. Some red crept to her cheeks. ‘A dear friend in Paris.’
The music played on, the two of them relaxed on the veranda, sipping their drinks.
But even with all these public assurances that there was nothing untoward in their relationship, people still talked. Mr Fouché cornered Pitso one day. ‘Young man, people are talking. And I don’t like the sound of it.’
‘What are they saying, meneer?’
‘Just stay away from the new teacher. I know you’re a young man, hot blood and all, but for your own sake stay away from her. Stick to your own people, to your own kind. Saartjie, the cook, is going crazy over you—’
Pitso laughed out loud.
‘You may laugh now, but tomorrow will be another story. If this thing gets serious and you must stick with Madame what’s-her-name, you’d better leave Bloemfontein. Go to Johannesburg, Cape Town, a bigger town where you can live as a white man. Do that. Around here, everybody knows you’re coloured and they will deal with you like a coloured man. In Johannesburg, you can easily pass for white. You are lucky that you’re handsome too.’
Christine’s accusation that he was seeing Saartjie began to make sense to Pitso. If Saartjie wanted him for herself, perhaps she had started spreading the rumours and even enlisted the help of Mr Fouché. Pitso decided to confront Saartjie.
CHAPTER 15
It was around 7 p.m. on a warm Wednesday. Pitso had been watching the door to the main kitchen vigilantly from his hideout. There were only three women in the kitchen: Saartjie and her two older colleagues. Thanks to his surveillance over the past eight days, he knew Saartjie was always the last to leave. Although he had never been inside the kitchen, he could imagine the three women finally sitting down to their supper after having dispatched food to the various sections of the centre.
He could picture them settling down for a hot cup of coffee after their meal. The gossip being exchanged between sips of coffee would be hot and spicy indeed. Every now and then, the laughter from the kitchen carried as far as his hideout – and he wondered what was being said about this or that man, or about this or that boss. He could hear the final rattle of coffee things as someone collected them. The task of washing the final cups would surely fall to Saartjie, being the youngest.
He could picture the other women taking off their aprons and wiping invisible breadcrumbs and balls of lint from their dresses as they prepared to go home. As the two elder women said their goodbyes, he could imagine Saartjie doing the final check-up – all windows closed, all plates, pots and dishes where they were supposed to be. The supervisor, who was always the first to arrive in the morning, was finicky about these things.
Having ascertained that the women were gone, he emerged from his hideout and approached the kitchen door, which was wide open.
Saartjie was sitting at the table, only now eating her supper. He hesitated. She was startled to her feet at the sight of him.
‘Magtig!’ she cried. ‘You want to give me a heart attack?’
‘My apologies.’
‘You must always announce yourself. Don’t move around like a ghost. Magtig!’
Behind the veneer of agitation and anger, however, her face was as exuberant as that of a cat which has just eyed a plateful of cream.
‘Looks like I’m not welcome here, Saartjie?’
‘Depends on what your mission is, Roeloffie.’
The anger he had been nursing as he stood in his hideout was gone. In its place, there was regret, guilt. He had disturbed the poor girl’s supper.
‘I wanted to speak to you about something, but seeing that you’re still eating …’
‘Speak. I’ll listen.’
‘But …’
‘Matter of fact, why don’t you join me for dinner?’
‘I’ve already had dinner.’
‘A man your size should never refuse a good meal. Especially from a lovely lady like myself.’
‘I have to go now, Saartjie. Whatever it is I wanted to say can wait.’
‘Do you want me to lose my temper and shout at you?’ She got up, hands balled into fists.
He quickly sat down on a chair opposite hers. She smiled.
‘You’re lucky there’s enough food for the two of us. And it is still very warm …’ Her voice trailed off as she started dishing up.
‘Smells good. What’s this you’ve cooked?’
‘Bobotie.’
‘What’s bobotie?’
‘Come, I’ll give you a taste.’
She took a dainty morsel with her spoon and held it out to him. He took the spoon from her and placed it in his mouth. He rolled the food on his tongue slowly, luxuriousl
y.
‘Hmm.’ He chewed, swallowed. ‘Sweet, yet salty. I taste some raisins here, and strange spices too. What is this?’
She explained the method of preparing bobotie and returned to the table with a steaming plateful of rice and bobotie. He grabbed a spoon and dug in as she watched with satisfaction. Then she crossed her arms and said, ‘You’ve turned your back on your own people. You are running after, slobbering over white women who have no genuine interest in you.’
‘You know nothing.’
‘And you?’
‘What I know is none of your business.’
‘This is a grown woman you’re dealing with. Not a child. She surely must have her own baggage, her own secrets, her own skeletons. Just like the rest of us.’
‘I have no interest in anyone’s skeletons.’
‘And I hear you refer to yourself by that heathen African name. You must make peace with the fact that you are neither white nor black. You are coloured. The Africans despise us. They call us names.’
‘You’d better stop now.’
‘There are truths that must be told. And, just in case you didn’t know, I am not scared of you. So, I will tell you straight: you are lost, you’re confused, you need help. I think you need a person who cares. A person who’ll help you come to terms with your demons, with your denial of who you truly are.’
‘And you are that person?’
‘What have I been saying all night?’
‘And what gives you the right to go around spreading malicious rumours about—’
‘There are no rumours, Roelof. What I have said is the truth: the two of us are in love, but one of us is still blind to the writing that is bright and clear on the wall. One day you’ll wake up from your foolishness and realise you love me, Roelof de la Rey. You love Sara Beauchamp.’
He finished his coffee, shaking his head. ‘Come, I’ll walk you home. But stop hallucinating about me.’
When Pitso saw Christine at school the following day, he couldn’t look her in the eye. Although nothing had transpired between him and Saartjie, he still felt guilty, as if he’d betrayed Christine merely by talking to the other woman. He felt naked. Felt as if she could see through him, as though he were a fraud, an imposter. Over the next few days, when she approached him, he was non-committal, evasive, gradually minimising their intimacy.