The knife was not necessary. The eland was dead and his skin unmarked. My father’s bullet had entered through one of the eyes and destroyed the brain. There was no exit wound.
He knelt next to the body and ran his fingers through the yellow-grey fur in a way that was almost loving. I did the same and I could feel the body heat rising to meet my touch. My father took the horns in both hands, as if measuring how thick they were and how heavy. ‘He’s too big to work him here,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll have to take him back to the barn. We can hang him up there.’
‘He’s the biggest buck I’ve ever seen.’ Even to my own ears I sounded out of breath and in awe.
‘Yes, he’s a big one. Chrissie, you run down to the place where we have to meet Uncle Stefan and them, and bring them here. I think there’s a winch on the truck. If there is, the five of us should be able to load him.’ You had to listen carefully for it, but if you knew my father, you could hear the pride in his voice. He knew it was a kill of which every hunter would be envious.
‘The bullet hit him in the eye. Did Pa aim for the eye?’
‘Yes. You run along now and bring the others.’ The pride was buried deep beneath whatever it was that kept him from displaying his feelings. ‘I’ll stay here to keep scavengers away.’
I ran all the way back along the sandy watercourse, only stopping two or three times to catch my breath. When I reached the place where we were to meet Abraham, Uncle Stefan and Uncle Pietertjie, they had not yet arrived, but I heard the Land Rover’s engine away in the brush in the direction we had seen them take. I found them ten minutes later, driving up a track towards the meeting place.
They stopped for me and, before they could speak, I shouted, ‘Did you all get anything?’ Then I saw the impala they had killed, a delicate creature about one-twentieth of the weight of my father’s eland. ‘It’s a nice one,’ I said.
‘It sounds like Bernard got something,’ Uncle Pietertjie said bitterly. He had never liked my father.
‘The biggest eland that ever lived,’ I said.
‘The biggest one that ever lived?’ The smile on Uncle Pietertjie’s face showed that he doubted that my father’s eland was anything special.
When we got back to the place, my father was sitting on the sand of the watercourse in the shade of a thorn bush. I leapt from the Land Rover before it stopped and was first to reach the eland. It seemed to me that without my being there to show it to them, they would not fully appreciate it. Abraham was not far behind me. Uncle Stefan and Uncle Pietertjie approached more casually, but when they stopped next to my father’s kill, it took them a few moments to find their voices. ‘It may just be the biggest eland that ever lived,’ Uncle Stefan said eventually. Then he glanced at my father. ‘Bernard, old brother, you can still shoot.’
‘Not too bad,’ Uncle Pietertjie said.
Everyone came to meet us as we drove in: Oupa, the women and girls, Ouma’s house servants and the yard boys. The rest immediately started making sounds that showed how impressed they were, but Oupa looked at the eland for maybe a minute before speaking. ‘This is about the biggest eland I’ve ever seen,’ he said eventually. I looked triumphantly at Abraham. No one dared argue with Oupa.
Because we had to go to the wedding, my father reluctantly left the skinning of the eland to two of the farm workers. ‘Petrus and Willem know how to work a skin,’ Oupa told him. ‘You don’t need to worry about them. They’ll give you a perfect skin.’
Petrus and Willem, both dressed in well-worn overalls and battered sneakers, were already preparing to hoist the eland up by its hind legs. It would hang from one of the beams of the storeroom while it was being skinned, then dismembered. Oupa strolled over to them. ‘Work the skin nicely for Kleinbaas Bernard,’ he said. ‘And cut him some of the ribs and one rump to take home.’
‘And the rest, Oubaas?’ the older of the two asked.
‘You can take the innards.’
‘Also the heart?’
‘Yes, also the heart.’
‘And the tail?’
The tail was a delicacy and Petrus was being more than a little optimistic. But Oupa was pleased with the eland and it was a very big animal. ‘All right, and one front leg.’
‘What about—’
‘No, God damn it, Petrus.’ For the first time Oupa sounded impatient. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Thank you, my baas,’ Petrus said.
fourteen
Because the bride was my cousin, we had seats of honour near the front of a church that was filled with friends and relatives. My parents sat next to each other, then Michie, then Annie, then me. Oupa and Ouma were in the very front row. All the men were wearing suits, even Abraham and I.
When our cousin came slowly down the aisle wearing what Mama said was a two thousand rand dress, Mama, Michie and Annie all started to cry. My knowledge of the other gender was superficial at that stage, but I had learnt enough to know that their crying was not necessarily a sign of distress.
The man she was going to marry was, like her, in his early twenties. He had a pencil-thin moustache and black hair that was slicked back across his head and plastered down so firmly that no individual hairs were visible. He turned to face my cousin with a smile so broad and teeth so white that I believe, on reflection all these years later, it contained a fair amount of lechery.
A lady from the church choir sang a hymn in a thin voice with a wobble in it, then the local dominee spoke about how grateful young women should be for the pleasures of matrimony. After that he spoke directly to my cousin and the lecherous one and suddenly they were getting married. That part of the service started Mama, Michie and Annie going again. But this time they were not alone. Most of the ladies in the church seemed either to be searching for handkerchiefs or, when they found them, pressing them against their eyes.
After the service, the congregation drove out to the farm in a convoy that churned up a tower of yellow dust as high as a five-storey building. I was in the third car and we could hardly see the road ahead. I cannot imagine how the driver of the last car managed to stay on the road at all.
At the wedding feast Annie, Abraham and I had to sit at the table furthest from the bride and groom, along with the small kids. Oupa and Ouma, Mama and my father, and Uncle Stefan and Auntie Virginia all sat at the main table. Somehow Michie was allowed to sit there too, probably because, as Mama had said, she was growing up now. Later on, she left the main table to sit at one where there were teenage boys she could smile at and get excited. That was Michie’s idea of a good time.
Soon toasts were being drunk, Ouma’s servants were bringing plates of meat cut from my father’s eland that they had been braaiing over open coals and speeches were being made. The longest one was Oupa’s. His speeches were always the longest. Then the newly married couple led the shuffling to the boeremusiek offering of a four-piece band made up of a guitar, a piano accordion and two concertinas. Finally, before the feast was quite over, I watched as the cousin and the lecher drove away alone to do whatever newly married people do. The rest of us waved at the retreating car, some of the men shouting encouragement.
As soon as we thought we could get away without anyone noticing or, at least without anyone caring, Abraham and I slipped away to swing from the top beam in Oupa’s barn. The barn was some three storeys high and the swinging possibilities were tremendous. We always borrowed a long rope that Oupa kept in a chest at the back of the barn and hung it over the beam just below the corrugated-iron roof. A ladder that led up to the top made it fairly easy to get there, as long as vertigo was not a problem you suffered from. The way we did it was to anchor one end of the rope at ground level. Taking hold of the other end, if you positioned yourself on a beam about halfway up and shoved off hard, you could reach nearly three storeys off the ground. You could only swing out once each time you pushed yourself off. Then you had to get back to the starting point. If you tried to keep it going, you were likely to be left dangling in the centre, hig
h above the hard, compacted dirt floor. Of course, our activities in the barn were not something Mama, or any of the other adults, knew about.
We took turns, swinging back and forth wildly through the warm night air, clinging desperately to the rope. If your hands slipped, a broken leg would be the least of your possible injuries.
After we had been swinging for perhaps half an hour, the rope suddenly slipped through Abraham’s hands and he fell. Fortunately he was not at the full extension when he lost his grip and he only fell about half the distance. He hurt his right ankle badly, but limped back to bed without any of the adults knowing what we had been doing. Falls, scrapes, bruises and even breaks were nothing unusual to either Abraham or me.
By the time I returned to the remains of the feast, the other guests had left for their homes in town and the rest of our family had disappeared into the house. Only my father, Oupa and Uncle Pietertjie remained. They were still at the main table, a half-empty bottle of brandy between them. The dishes had been cleared away. I went to join them, still glowing with the excitement of our acrobatics in the barn.
Despite the wedding, it had been the most satisfying day of my life. My father’s eland in the morning and the swinging in Oupa’s barn in the evening were more than anyone had the right to expect in one day. It was with this sense of masculine adventure washing over me that I approached Uncle Pietertjie and the two men I admired most in the world. They all had their backs to me, but I could hear Uncle Pietertjie clearly.
‘Bernard, you always carry on about how important your work is, but you can’t tell me it’s such a big thing. Those people you work with are nothing. The real danger comes from the blacks, not from a few stupid Hotnots who think they can pass for white.’
My father was facing directly away from me. He answered, but his reply was mumbled and I could only make out one word. He had said something about principle.
‘Principle’s arse,’ Uncle Pietertjie said. ‘It takes guns to defend the white man, not principles. You spend your life on nonsense and you tell yourself that what you do is important. Why don’t you get a real job?’
My father had been sitting on the edge of his chair. Now he started to rise, but Uncle Pietertjie had turned and was already walking quickly towards the house, as if someone were chasing him.
‘Sit down, Bernard,’ I heard Oupa say. ‘Ignore Pieter, I don’t know what his problem is. I think he’s jealous about the eland. Most hunters never shoot anything like that in their lives.’
Uncle Pietertjie disappeared into the house, slamming the screen door behind him. I stepped in behind one of the thorn trees so that, if my father or Oupa turned round, they would not see me. My mother had often told me not to eavesdrop, that it was a bad thing and that good people did not do it, but I had learnt so many interesting things that way. Being a little bit bad seemed like a small price to pay.
Oupa was leaning back in his canvas camping chair. My father was still sitting upright on a wooden kitchen chair. They were both drinking brandy from tumblers. ‘It’s not like Pietertjie says,’ my father told Oupa in that way that he had, without looking directly at him. ‘I’m proud of my work.’
‘Of course, Bernardus,’ Oupa growled. It was the first time I had heard him use my father’s full name. ‘Don’t let Pieter’s nonsense bother you.’
They lapsed into a silence that lasted so long that I thought the conversation was over. I was about to step out from behind the tree and stroll innocently towards them when my father spoke again. ‘As if his work is so wonderful. What’s so wonderful about selling houses?’
‘Forget Pieter. He gets this way sometimes.’
My father seemed to gather his thoughts, taking a deep breath before speaking again. ‘And I’ve done well. I’ve been commended by head office – more than once.’ He was arguing a point that no one was disputing. Even at that age it seemed to me that he might be trying to persuade himself.
‘You’ve done well,’ Oupa reassured him. ‘You are respected at work and you’ve made a living, you’ve supported your family.’
‘With some help from Pa.’
This was news to me. In my experience, my father was always in control. He never needed help from anyone, not even Oupa.
‘What’s wrong with that? It was not excessive and it was when you were young and newly married. In the Lord’s name – I’m your father. We are family.’
‘A man shouldn’t need help from his father.’
‘Stop this, Bernardus.’ I could hear that Oupa’s patience was reaching its limit. He had never had sympathy with self-pity and those who exercised it. ‘You’ve done well in life and you’ll still do better. I can see more promotions coming. When Brown retires they’ll make you head in the province. I can see it coming.’
‘It’s good of Pa to say that.’
‘I only say it because I can see it happening.’
But my father was not yet through wallowing in his doubts. ‘I know I’m good at my work, but sometimes the borderline cases bother me.’
‘You don’t need to have a bad conscience.’
‘I don’t have a bad conscience. But I am sometimes troubled by a case. The other day a matter came before me involving two of our own people. The man was the chairman of our party’s South Coast branch. They adopted a baby five years ago. Now the child has to go to school. The school took one look at him, then called me. The little boy is clearly not white. He should not have been given to those parents. We had to put him into a coloured school and warn the parents that, when he turns sixteen, he has to leave their home. They were very upset. They may even leave the party.’
‘Don’t be troubled by that,’ Oupa said. ‘Sometimes hard decisions have to be made. If your country needs you to do this work, you have no reason to be troubled by it.’
For the first time since I had been watching them, my father looked straight at Oupa. ‘Does Pa mean that?’ he asked.
Oupa waved an exasperated hand under his son’s nose. ‘All societies have difficult jobs that have to be done. If your country needs an assassin, you don’t use a poet. We send our boys to the border to defend us. But we don’t send them on commando raids when throats have to be slit. We find psychopaths to do that. All countries do.’
‘I don’t see the connection,’ my father said.
‘The connection is obvious. This is a job that has to be done. I can see that it has to be done. We have to draw the line somewhere. But if it bothers you, you don’t have to be the person doing it.’
‘Should I be running away and leaving it to someone else?’
Oupa shook his head, but placed a hand on my father’s shoulder. ‘It’s not like that. You’re too serious, Bernard. You’re much too serious. Like every sensible person, I believe in the death penalty. An eye for an eye is God’s way. But I won’t take the job of executioner. We can find someone to do it. Good, ordinary people don’t have to do it.’ Oupa still had his hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘You can leave it for someone else, but if you do it yourself, you don’t need to have a bad conscience. What you are doing is important for all of us. Look at it that way.’
My father looked at Oupa a while longer, then rose slowly. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.’
‘Then sleep well.’
He started to move away, but stopped almost immediately. ‘Pa?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For what Pa just said.’
‘Sleep well, Bernard. You’re doing important work. I want you to remember that.’
‘Sleep well, Pa.’ My father walked towards the house, a figure slowly diminishing in the sporadic bursts of light from lamps hanging in the thorn trees.
I waited until my grandfather had turned back to his brandy before slipping away myself. By the time I crawled into bed, Abraham was asleep. A single gas lamp threw a faint yellow light across his face, making him look older than he was. The colour it lent to his face gave him what m
y father called a sallow complexion. For a moment, and just from that angle, he looked strangely like Ruthie. I moved a step to one side, the light shifted and the moment passed. His eyes were pinched tightly shut and his lips were pressed hard together. I saw little lines on his forehead and around his eyes that I had never seen before. I closed the gas valve, looking at his face as the light died.
fifteen
The revolution in Mozambique took place a few weeks after our visit to the farm. It hit our home like a tsunami.
In Portugal the old dictator had died and, with his passing, all his works had collapsed. Among them was the colonial regime in Mozambique. We felt it more keenly than most because their southern border was less than an hour’s drive from Oupa’s farm. Rebel forces that had been hiding in the hills were suddenly in Lourenço Marques. What had been a Portuguese city became an African one overnight. Many of the Portuguese who fled the city, and almost all of them did, came south where they were interned in transit camps in two small country towns, Jozini and Cullinan. After that, most of the Jozini inmates passed through my father’s office.
To me, the events in Mozambique had a special significance. My father had taken us there on holiday on more than one occasion, the most recent being only a year before. We stayed in a hotel called the Girasol, a round tower with a restaurant on the top floor. While having breakfast, you could look out across the city and part of the bay, imagining all the fun you were going to have that day.
I remembered crowding into a small sail boat with perhaps a dozen local people and one sweating Portuguese businessman to ride the quiet, slow swell of the bay to Inhaca Island at the point where the bay meets the open sea. The engine of the pitching, crowded boat cut out every twenty minutes or so, forcing the captain to switch to sail till he could get it running again. There were men on the island who carried Mama, Michie and Annie from the boat to shore. They wanted to carry my father, Abraham and me too, but we refused and waded through the thigh-deep water. Afterwards we had lunch on the porch of the hotel, looking across the bay to the city, and felt like millionaires. At least we, the four kids, did.
The Classifier Page 11