by Linzi Glass
‘No one must know, Ruby.’ Mother and Father had sat me down the day after Julian’s bloody attack. ‘Our lives might be in danger,’ Father said gruffly.
‘We aren’t trying to scare you, darling,’ Mother had added, ‘it’s just that we don’t want to draw attention… you understand?’ She brushed a strand of hair off my face. ‘If anyone finds out…’
‘I would never do anything to hurt us. Or Julian.’ My eyes moved back and forth between them. They both looked tired and drawn. ‘I promise.’
I guarded the secrecy of Julian fiercely, not just for my parents’ sake, but for my own. For me, having been an only child my whole life, he was like a wonderful older brother. I could share pieces of myself with him that I would not dare share with anyone else.
‘What does love feel like?’ I asked Julian as I knelt beside his bed and wrapped rolls of white bandages round his wounds.
Julian chuckled. ‘It feels like a very bad stomach ache that only goes away when you are near the person who has your heart.’
‘It should be your heart that hurts then, not your stomach.’
‘Ah, that comes later.’ Julian winced as he tried to prop himself up on his freshly bandaged hands.
‘When is that?’
‘When it is all over.’ He smoothed the bed sheets down clumsily with his white club-like appendages. ‘It is then that the heart hurts.’
‘There should be thick bandages to wrap round a heart to help it heal faster,’ I said.
‘There are, Ruby.’
‘What are they?’
‘The gauze of time.’ His eyes suddenly must have felt heavy for he closed them slowly as he spoke. ‘I am rambling… all this pain medication that Dr Jacobs makes me take. It makes me speak mumbo-jumbo like a crazy man.’
‘That’s not crazy talk. It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘And sad too.’
‘You think?’ His eyes gradually opened. ‘Yes, beauty and pain are close companions.’ Julian smiled weakly and lifted his bandaged hand and pointed it in my direction. ‘Beauty…’ he said, then turned his hand towards his own chest, ‘and pain.’
‘I am not beautiful.’ I blushed deeply.
‘Yes, you are. And one day someone will look into your eyes and tell you just how beautiful you are inside and out. And you will believe it when you are ready to know that it is true.’
Chapter Seven
Rugby has never been a sport for the faint at heart. Here men and boys pit themselves against each other flesh to flesh. Muscle to muscle. Might to might. Protective clothing and gear is left for sissy sports. Shorts, rugby boots and striped rugby shirts is their simple uniform. Headgear is worn only by the locks whose ears get mashed between the thighs of other men in the sweaty scrum. It prevents them from getting ‘cauliflower ears’. Elbow guards, knee pads and groin cups are never used. Jock straps, however, are a must.
While my father detested rugby for its boorish brutality, most men considered it the king of all South African sports. A national sport that was played by ‘real men’ and boys who were on their way to becoming ‘real men’. Fifteen ‘tough okes’ per team kicked and pushed and charged each other for possession of a tear-shaped pigskin ball that had to be passed backwards to a player before it was punted high in the air through tarnished goal posts. Bloody noses, bruises and broken bones were commonplace. I saw it as a modern-day pastime speckled with flashes of bygone gladiators in the arena and damsels clutching at their breasts from the sidelines as their brave men fell.
It was compulsory for everyone in our school to attend every rugby match whether you wanted to or not. Roll call was taken as we filed on to the foreign or familiar home rugby field by school prefects. Since I was a prefect I dared not miss a single match.
Our school’s rugby team was one of the best amongst the English-speaking high schools. They wore our school colours, maroon and gold, proudly. Regal and gleaming, our handpicked brawny lads made Barnard High a force to be reckoned with and to fear on the field. Of course, Desmond was one of the chosen fifteen and played the important position of scrum-half. We usually competed against other English schools like King Edwards, Marist Brothers and Parktown High, and generally won, but it was rare for our team to be pitted against the Afrikaans-speaking high schools whose teams were known to be formidable.
As much as there was forced separation between blacks and whites there was almost as great a separation between the English and Afrikaans-speaking whites of our country, but that division was self-imposed by both groups. Longstanding enemies since the Anglo-Boer War of almost eighty years earlier, the descendants of Holland and the descendants of England still stood their colonial ground on opposite sides of a land already divided.
‘Waste of a Friday afternoon as far as I’m concerned,’ Father grumbled as he drove me through the unfamiliar neighbourhood of Newberry Park, glancing down occasionally at the printed school flyer that had directions to the well-known private Afrikaans high school, Steunmekaar.
‘It’s school policy, especially since I’m a prefect.’ I fiddled with the elephant-hair bracelet that Thandi had given me on my most recent visit to the gallery.
‘Steunmekaar… Support each other, that’s what it means,’ Father said as he pulled through the large brick gateposts that marked the entrance to the school. ‘And they do only help each other.’ He swerved the car to a halt at the entrance to the gymnasium where our school was to meet before the game began.
‘There have to be some Afrikaners that aren’t like that,’ I said, grabbing my satchel from the back seat of his spit-polished Citroën.
‘Let me know when you meet one, Ruby.’ Father kissed me on the cheek as I leaned through the driver’s window and I could not help but notice a grim tightness in his voice as I pinned my prefect’s badge on to the V-neck maroon sweater that I wore over my blue school pinafore. The afternoon was warm for a winter’s day and I was glad that I had left my heavy jacket at home.
It was strange to hear Afrikaans spoken all around me. Although I had learned it as a second language since I had first started school I had never heard it spoken by so many people at once. While I was getting an A in Afrikaans the conversations around me, as I made my way into the rugby stands, were faster paced and more guttural sounding, so I could only grasp every second word or so.
‘Gister het ek in a groot veg met my ma gekry.’
‘Werklik! Dit is nie so goed nie!’
‘Wag vir my – ek moet my boeke in die klaskamer sit!’
‘Maak gou!’
‘En my pa was nie tuis nie.’
‘Het julle die lekker meisies van Barnard gesien? Yirra, mooi, man!’
What I managed to pick up from all the chatter was that someone had had an argument with their mother, another student wanted her friends to wait up while she put her books away and a group of Steunmekaar boys were commenting that we girls from Barnard High were pretty!
The students from Steunmekaar High did not look all that different from us. Good haircuts and straight white teeth. A few more blond crew cuts on the boys and a few more tightly woven braids on the girls, but mostly they were our counterparts. Well-to-do kids from well-to-do families.
Some of them bore the markings of their Dutch descendants: rosy, rugged cheeks and upturned noses. A handsome collection of Afrikaans blue blood that bore the names of Van Niekerk and Van Rensburg proudly.
As I took my seat in the stands I could see the back of the captain of their team, in his black shorts and black-and-red striped jersey, making his way across the field to Desmond, our team captain – a natural selection since it was usually the scrum-half who led the team. I could not help but wonder if their captain was as arrogant and stuck up as Desmond.
‘Boy is he cute, even if he is Afrikaans.’ Janice Harris nudged me with her plump arm as we sat side by side in the stands. She was one of the less attractive girls that Desmond had snubbed and was fast becoming my new companion since the battle lines had been drawn and Monica h
ad deserted me.
‘I couldn’t tell.’ I tried to sound nonchalant.
‘I passed him in the hallway on my way to the bathroom when we got here.’ Janice riffled the one-page flyer that listed the players of both teams. ‘I almost choked on my caramel. He’s got the bluest eyes!’ She held the piece of paper towards me and pointed a chubby finger at a place on the page. ‘Johann Duikster!’ She smacked her lips together when she said his name, as if it were a morsel of something sweet and delicious.
I got my first real glimpse of Johann Duikster as he shook hands with Desmond on the sidelines and nodded his head in the direction of the referee with a signal to toss the coin to decide which team would choose sides first.
He was tall with blond hair that fell haphazardly over his eyes, an aquiline nose set over a full mouth, a prominent jaw that gave him the characteristic of self-assurance.
In the next moments I don’t remember if the filled-to-capacity crowd applauded enthusiastically as both teams ran on to the field or if school war cries were uttered enthusiastically from the lips of both sides. What I do remember was that my stomach lurched on a sudden roller coaster that did not stop until Johann turned away from my direction and gave his teammates a thumbs-up to say they had won the toss.
Was the game close? Were there any bloody noses or broken bones? Did the afternoon weather warm up or cool down? I don’t know. I kept my eyes fixed on the one object that had taken over all my senses, that made the world around him blur and fade. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this moment, this firing up in my belly, the molten glow racing through my veins.
Johann and I never met that afternoon. Our team lost to Steunmekaar 14–13 in an emotionally charged and exciting match. As both teams filed off the rugby field with the war cry of Steunmekaar Hoër filling the early evening sky I caught one last glimpse of him, the orange-and-gold light of dusk bouncing off his fair head as he was surrounded by his teammates who smothered him in a massive bear hug. I was rather glad that his team had won. I was secretly overjoyed that Desmond had not matched up to Johann and that he and his brute-strong team had deflated our very inflated scrum-half. Desmond had shaken hands with the Steunmekaar team with flushed cheeks and an achingly forced smile across his sweaty face. He must have had his father’s driver and Rolls-Royce waiting for him and made a hasty getaway, for he was nowhere to be seen as we all stood around outside talking about what a close game it had been and how Steunmekaar just got lucky that day.
Father, who was supposed to fetch me at six o’clock, was running late and I was one of the last Barnard High students left outside the unfamiliar school gates. It was growing dark as I waited patiently for Father’s Citroën to come screeching into the car park with the apologetic excuse that he was stuck at a legal counsel meeting longer than expected.
‘Excuse me…’
I snapped my head round in the direction of the voice. It belonged to a Steunmekaar girl who was standing right beside me. I had not noticed her coming up to me in the fading light.
‘Forgive my English, mejevrou, I mean, miss, but I’m only a C student in Engels… I mean English.’
‘That’s okay.’ I smiled back at her.
She was tall with a pixie-like blonde bob that might have looked better on a more petite girl, but her eyes were a warm brown and gave her a kind and open face.
‘My naam is Loretta.’ She held a slim hand out to me. I took it and held it in mine for a second.
‘Ruby is my naam. Aangename kennis.’ I used the formal term for ‘pleasure to meet you’ since we were strangers and that is what Mejevrou Brand had taught us in form one. When you greeted a friend there was a more casual salutation but I had forgotten what it was.
‘Aangename kennis, ook.’ She put her satchel on the ground between us.
‘My father is late,’ I said.
‘Myne ook. I mean, mine too.’
‘And it’s almost dark,’ I said, looking around the dimly lit quadrangle and realizing that we were now completely alone.
‘It is okay,’ Loretta said, sensing my sudden uneasiness, ‘Moenie worry nie.’ She patted the wall behind her and hoisted herself up. ‘Kom sit. I will not leave you.’
I felt a sudden tightness in my throat as I pulled myself up on the wall beside her. Monica had left me. All those birthday cards that were signed ‘Best friend forever’. All those weekend sleepovers and midnight kitchen raids. All those marathon maths test study sessions and Saturday shopping trips. Was it that easy for a boy to come along and wipe it all away?
‘You are thinking a lot.’ Loretta touched her temple. ‘Lots of thoughts, yes?’
‘Sorry.’ I stammered. The air was growing colder and I shivered under my now insufficient layers of clothing.
‘’n Jas? You want a jacket?’ Loretta asked.
‘Please.’
She jumped down and unzipped her satchel to pull out a neatly folded black school blazer with the Steunmekaar emblem stitched boldly in red across its right breast pocket. She held it up to me and I took it appreciatively.
I slipped on the blazer and we sat there in the darkness, two schoolgirls waiting for our respective lifts. It occurred to me that to anyone passing by in the chilled night air we appeared to be two Afrikaans teenage girls who attended the same school and spoke the same language at home. It seemed suddenly incredible to me that, just by changing school colours, I became someone else. A chameleon of a kind. I now wore a new skin that would make people look at me in a different way – I was now a Steunmekaar girl in a uniform that got me accepted in their community. And I wondered how I would be treated if I went home with Loretta in my maroon-and-gold English school attire? Was it our colours that opened and closed doors to us?
‘Ruby,’ Loretta asked shyly, ‘what is your school like?’
‘Like yours, mostly. Except maroon and gold.’
She looked at me quizzically. ‘Oh, not so different, ja?’
‘No. Not so different at all.’
Loretta waited with me until Father’s headlights caught us both in their high beam. He watched as I jumped off the wall, handed Loretta back her school blazer and hugged her goodbye. I had offered to wait with her but she said her father was always late and it was no problem for her to be alone. She was accustomed to it. We had switched back and forth between English and Afrikaans in the half hour or so that we were together, and in the end we altered our sentences into a melding of both languages. Our conversation flowed smoothly once we had fallen into a blending together of both.
Loretta and I exchanged phone numbers and when I told her how far apart we lived, she smiled her warm open smile and said simply,‘’ n Boer maak ’n plan.’
I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant and wondered as I pulled myself into Father’s warm car and waved a quick goodbye when we passed her. She was still sitting, long legs dangling over the wall. I wanted to tell Father how Loretta offered me her jacket and how interested she was in my life. I wanted him to know that not all Afrikaners were only interested in helping each other, but the words tumbled out of me in one exuberant breath.
‘I have met one.’
Chapter Eight
Julian held a paintbrush in his hands for the first time almost exactly a month after the tsotsie ambush. He had talked longingly to me about the sweet, tangy beer that they served at the local shebeen that he frequented in Soweto and told Father that he preferred the taste to the Lion lager that Father served him in large frothy ice-cold mugs. With Julian unable to do much, the two of them sat and chatted in Father’s study in the late afternoons when Father returned from his office. I would sometimes slip quietly into Father’s cool Persian-rugged office and listen quietly while the two men spoke. Their conversation always varied and I frequently left the quiet of the room having learned something new from one or both of them. One particular conversation disturbed me and stayed for a long while afterwards.
It began rather simply:
‘How was your day, sir?�
�� Julian enquired. He insisted on calling Father ‘sir’ no matter how many times Father pleaded with him to call him by his first name.
‘David.’ Father threw his legs up on his desk and leaned back on his plush chair, clasping his hands behind his head. ‘My day was… long. And frustrating.’
‘And why was that, sir?’ Julian took a long draught of beer as I positioned myself on the arm of his chair.
‘I am like a small pike battling to swim upstream in very rough and treacherous waters filled with many sharks.’ Father sighed.
‘The Special Branch, yes?’ Julian wiped away the foam that had settled above his upper lip with the back of his hand.
‘They have spies everywhere, terrified Soweto dwellers who are threatened with their lives unless they give them information.’ Father ran his fingers through his tousled hair. ‘They just arrested one of the best in the underground. Malufa.’
‘I have heard of him.’ Julian set his mug down carefully on a yellow-wood antique table beside him.
‘Damn shame. A tip from a scared-stiff neighbour of his, who was told she would lose her children and her job if she didn’t tell them what went on until the early hours of the morning in his shack.’ Father sighed again and rubbed the crease between his brows. ‘He was being groomed to be a leader for change.’
‘We are not ready for change,’ Julian said quietly.
‘Not ready? That’s absurd!’ Father swung his legs off the table and leaned forward on his chair. ‘Your art, Julian, your art is all about your people’s dismal reality. It cries out for change. I don’t understand…’
‘Yes, my art is a plea, a cry to my people. A mirror, so that they may hold the canvas up against themselves and see the ugly face of truth. Maybe then they will say, “Hai wena! This is how cracked our mirror is. This is how hopeless our lives are. We must stand together and fight as one.”’ Julian stood and paced the room. ‘Instead, they stab the hand that shows the truth. No, sir. Until we can unite brother to brother, until we can snuff out the burning jealousy that destroys when one of us rises from the filthy ashes—’ Julian ran his hand slowly along the jagged scar that ran the length of his forearm – ‘then, sir, we will be ready for change.’ His voice quivered as he spoke.