The Classifier

by Wessel Ebersohn

  Now Snake was on familiar territory. ‘That’s where people make a mistake,’ he said. ‘Skin colour is the smallest thing. The trained eye sees much more.’

  For the next hour I grilled the meat, moving back and forth between the drums, while Snake followed me. He explained how you spotted flaring, African nostrils on even a fair-skinned suspect, what gabled eyebrows were and what they meant in a person’s genealogy, what sort of curly hair indicated African heritage and what sort did not, the peculiar curve of the Indian nose, how to tell Chinese ancestry even if it were three generations ago, the importance of a bluish tint on the underside of the eyelids and, when nothing else had given the suspect away, the surest proof of all, genitalia that developed a blue tint in cold weather. The last was a difficult one though and usually had to be left to the security police.

  I moved back and forth, piling the meat onto the enamelled steel plates along the edges of the coals, nodding from time to time to show him that I was listening. And I was listening – very closely. Occasionally, I turned to make eye contact to show my interest and that he could trust me.

  The confusion I thought I had buried deep enough to be no threat rose up, churning through my soul. Yes, I understood about sallow skin tone. Yes, I knew that long black hair could be Greek, but it could also be Malay. Yes, and very dark eyes, eyes that were beyond brown, yes, I knew about them too.

  It was not easy to stop Snake talking. By the time the meat was done, he was still in full flow. It took another half an hour to free myself from him, but before I managed that, I had him promise to give me the official documentation that explained everything. ‘But don’t let anyone know where you got it, not even your father,’ Snake said. ‘In fact, don’t let him see that you’ve got it.’ I promised and we arranged that I would cycle into town the next day after school to meet him near the office.

  It was not long after we had eaten and I had finally escaped from Snake, that my father decided it was time for us to go home. It was not ten yet, but already some of my father’s colleagues were behaving in a way that he considered unseemly. A few husbands were crowding other men’s wives a little too enthusiastically. Their husbands had not noticed, because they were either part of a little group crooning sentimental love songs or were themselves crowding other wives. If the party was going to get out of hand in any way, my father was not going to allow any of us to be witnesses to it. It was disappointing, but changing his mind at times like that was not something I ever attempted. On the way home, he questioned me.

  ‘It seemed that you and Snake Wilson were doing a lot of talking,’ he said. ‘Or rather Snake did a lot of talking and you did a lot of listening.’

  I decided to stay on safe ground. ‘He explained to me about the moral basis for our policies,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, really?’ My father sounded doubtful. ‘And what, in Mister Wilson’s view, is the moral basis for our policies?’

  I was sitting between the girls and knew they had both turned to look at me. ‘As if he knows,’ Annie said.

  ‘Let Chrissie tell me,’ my father said.

  ‘We are a minority in a country of minorities. And it is our destiny to uphold Christian values in our country and on our continent and to protect all our people of every race from terrorists. For this reason we follow the policy of separate development which has been ordained by God.’ I stuck out my tongue at Annie in triumph to show her that I thought my answer was a pretty good one.

  ‘Is that all he said?’ my father wondered.

  ‘That was the main thing.’

  My father seemed to think about it for a while. When he finally spoke, it was to say something that really did surprise me. ‘Chrissie, our policy is not a holy thing decreed by God. It is something we created, not the Lord, and we created it to protect ourselves. We should not be cruel to others, but we designed our policy for ourselves, not for people of other races.’

  thirty-two

  The next day Snake Wilson did as he had promised, meeting me in a little arcade off Smith Street, a few blocks from the Indian Council building. He had obviously been hurrying. He was sweating in his dark suit and tie and his hair was standing awry. Without discussion, he took the document from the briefcase he was carrying. What he was doing was risky, but Snake could not resist displaying his knowledge or his importance. This seemed to be especially the case when he was dealing with Bernard Vorster’s son. ‘I’m only giving this to you because I can see that you’re a serious young man,’ he told me. ‘You think the way I do.’ He handed me the two photocopied pages, glancing over his shoulder towards the entrance to the arcade as he did so. ‘You hide it away. Don’t let your father see it.’

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I promise.’ And this time I meant it.

  ‘Then burn it when you’re finished.’

  ‘I will.’

  At home, I found that Mama was in the garden. The girls were in their bedroom pretending to be doing their homework, but actually reading romance novels published by a company called Mills & Boon. They read plenty of them. I went into my bedroom, closed the door behind me and dragged my chest of drawers in front of it. Only then did I unfold the pages and spread them out on my bed.

  The document was in the form of a memorandum and carried the national coat of arms at the top of the first page. It was simply entitled, ‘Population Registration’. The early part listed the indigenous African ethnic groups, where their homelands were and what languages they spoke. Among those listed were the Zulus (the only ones I had been truly aware of till then), the Xhosas, Vendas, Swazis, Southern Sothos, Northern Sothos, Tswanas, Ndebeles, Tsongas, Shangaans and Pondos. I knew that there were also the almost extinct hunter-gatherer clans, the San and the Khoi, but they seemed to have been ignored.

  The document contained a paragraph about the Indians and the way the colonial powers had been foolish enough to bring them into the country as indentured labour, the implication being that now we were stuck with them.

  But most of the document was devoted to the coloured question. Clearly they were the problem area. So many of them tried deceitfully to pass for white that special attention had to be given to them. Mixed with their indigenous parentage, some of them had white ancestry, the document said, provided by foreign sailors and other low-grade men. These low-quality men had, by their actions, complicated the work of my father’s department.

  Near the end of a long explanation of the complexities of registering coloured people in the right categories was a description of the way our identity numbers were created. First there was a block of six digits that carried the person’s date of birth, then a block of four that held a serial number and a block representing the person’s gender. After that there were the two blocks that held the key to the cardholder’s life. It was the code that revealed the person’s race, but only if you understood the code. It was supposed to be top secret. Finally there was a single control digit. There was no explanation for that one. The description was followed by the table that gave the race codes that appeared in every person’s identity number. It looked like this: White 00, Cape Coloured 01, Coloured of South West Africa 20, Malay 02, Griqua 03, Chinese 04, Indian 05, Other Asian 06, Other Coloured 07, Rehoboth Baster 08, and Nama of South West Africa 09. The indigenous Africans were not included in this because they were seen as something apart and had different identity documents. They were also the only ones who could be jailed for not carrying their documents with them.

  I spent perhaps an hour studying the pages Snake had given me, trying with little success to remember what I had heard in our school history books about all the racial ingredients in our genetic mix. Most categories in the literature of my father’s department were completely new to me.

  And where would Ruthie fit in? Was she a Cape Coloured? That seemed unlikely. She had only spent a few months in the Cape. She was certainly not a Coloured of South West Africa. She had never lived there either. I was sure she was not a Malay or a Griqua. Perhaps she was an Other
Coloured. And what was a Rehoboth Baster?

  If, according to my father’s department, Ruthie was an Other Coloured, her identity number would carry 06 as the second and third last digits. If she was a Cape Coloured there would be a 01.

  Strangest of all was that my father had the power to change Ruthie’s number. If he decided that she could have a 00, no one would check up on him. That decision became law, as far as her identity was concerned. I would wait for the right moment to ask him, I thought. Perhaps I would ask Oupa to help me persuade him. From what I had seen, my father could simply announce that this family was under investigation and that he would be handling the matter himself. It would be easy.

  But there was Ruthie’s mother. If Ruthie was the light colour of the underside of the great eland my father had shot, her mother was closer to the dark fur on its back. What would my father say when he saw Ma Peterson?

  I was suddenly overcome with fear at the idea that the authorities had already placed my Ruthie into a category that compelled her to live only in a place like Greenwood Park and that I was in a category that meant I would never be able to live there. I could not bear the thought that anyone, my father or anyone else, should decide where she should be, what doors she could enter and which would be closed to her. The rest of the coloured community was someone else’s problem. Ruthie was mine.

  There was something less than noble about the process within me. I knew even then that I was not thinking about the other millions who were classified into one of those many categories. The growing outrage within me did not have to do with my sense of justice or the injustices I saw being applied to other people. I remembered the way Ruthie seemed to shrink when the driver threatened to throw us off the bus. I saw in my memory the way she ran up the hill into Greenwood Park that night. I recalled the panic in her eyes.

  Everyone I knew said how important my father’s work was. But what about Ruthie?

  Before my father came home, I made notes of what I thought were the main points in the document. I found my mother’s matches, set the document alight and threw the ashes out of my window into the garden. A breeze was blowing and it carried the ashes across the narrow lane between our house and the adjoining property. I watched until they disappeared into a bank of ferns that grew against the garden wall on the other side.

  thirty-three

  In the months after I went to see La Traviata with Ruthie, I lived for Saturday afternoons. We both kept to our arrangement that we would go to our special place every Saturday at two-thirty and leave at three if the other had not come. And we both swore that we would do everything possible to avoid missing our weekly date.

  But now things had changed between us. On the first afternoon after our kiss in the lighting box, we started talking as we always had, but at some point the conversation dried up. I remember Ruthie’s face so close that she seemed to be squinting at me, rather like Greta’s the night that Abraham had made love to Jill. This time there was no hesitation.

  The first kiss in our special place in the cane seemed to affect certain of our muscles because, without planning it, we found ourselves lying down on the grass. That position only lasted for a few seconds. Ruthie pulled away from me and sat up quickly. ‘No. We mustn’t lie down,’ she said. ‘We must never lie down.’

  I resisted asking why lying down was such a bad idea. Sitting up, my senses were as filled with the wonder that was Ruthie. That first Saturday afternoon she wore a cotton skirt and a woollen jumper that fitted snugly around her upper body, displaying every developing curve to the uninitiated young lover next to her. My hands roamed tentatively over her, my fingertips only touching the outlines lightly, not yet bold enough to take hold firmly of any part of her.

  Because she was so much smaller than me, I often found my face in her hair, my senses dazzled by the gentle scent of flowers that rose from it. It did not matter that the luscious scent did not emanate naturally from her.

  From the beginning I had a difficulty that I tried to hide to avoid embarrassing myself in front of her. Every time we were together, as soon as the talking stopped and the kissing commenced, I had the most desperate erection possible to contemplate. I always positioned myself as carefully as the moment allowed. It was unthinkable to have my erection press against her or, even worse, have one of her hands come to rest on it. The problem of trying not to let it show was equally great. I was careful not to wear tight-fitting jeans. I reasoned that if she saw an unusual bump in pants that were loose-fitting, it might just seem the way the folds in the fabric had fallen. I told myself that she would probably not notice. She would not even think of such a thing. It was a shameful condition, especially for Ruthie, who did not even want to lie down on the grass.

  Our first tentative movements towards lovemaking did not altogether shut out the talking. There was always more that we wanted to tell each other about our lives and more we wanted to know about each other. One of the things she wanted to tell me more about was opera.

  ‘I have discovered a wonderful singer,’ she told me. ‘His name is Placido Domingo. I bought a used LP of his at the flea market. It was not expensive. The main song is called ‘Che Gelida Manina’. You must get it and listen to it. You’ll love it.’

  I did as she said, one Saturday morning buying the record that contained songs from La bohème. As soon as I got home, I put it on the only record player we had, which was in the living room. The song that Ruthie had told me about and the great tenor’s singing of it was every bit as wonderful as she had said it would be. It thrilled me with the power of a newly discovered love. It also attracted the whole family from whatever they were busy with. Ours was a household in which the music that we heard was usually of the sentimental, country-and-western variety.

  Mama listened for a few moments with raised eyebrows. ‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘so that is what La Traviata sounds like,’ and went back to the kitchen.

  Annie snorted and said something about this being just like the time I prayed over Tjol’s coffin. I was always pretending to be better than everyone else.

  Michie listened for a few minutes, then said, ‘Quite nice,’ before going back to their bedroom.

  It was my father who surprised me. He sat down on the couch opposite me and, when the song was over, asked me to play it again. ‘Chrissie, that is a beautiful piece of music and that man has an exceptional way of singing.’

  In all, I played both sides of the disc twice before he was satisfied. At the end, he rose slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I understand why you like this music,’ he said. ‘Is there more of it?’

  ‘I believe there’s a lot more,’ I said.

  ‘What is the language?’

  ‘Italian.’

  He nodded. ‘What a pity we don’t have something like that in Afrikaans.’

  Some Saturdays either Ruthie or I were not able to get away. These were painful, distracted days when my thoughts could not be directed towards anything else. The worst of all was a day when a late decision was made to go to visit Oupa and Ouma. Errands had to be run and bits of business conducted in the morning. We only got away shortly after two. We took the same route that Ruthie and I travelled every Saturday afternoon on our bikes to get to our special place in the cane. As my father drove up the long hill towards the place where we turned off the main road into the cane, I could see Ruthie in the distance, struggling up the incline. Before we reached her, she had turned and disappeared into the cane. It was only as the car passed the canebreak that, for a moment, I saw her again. She had got off her bike and was wheeling it up the grass-covered path. Then we were past and I knew she would be waiting alone in the canebreak, wondering what had happened to me. It was awful.

  Inevitably the demands of our bodies slowly became more urgent. The rushing blood in our veins or the hormones flooding us or whatever it is that causes the excitement within two young people alone together would not always be satisfied by a little kissing and some uncertain fumbling. The first time I touched the sof
tness of her breasts through the protective layers of dress and brassiere and she left my hand there generated an excitement within me that I had not imagined possible. Without planning it, we were lying down on the grass and this time my erection was pressed hard against her.

  It took another week before my right hand slipped between the buttons of the blouse she was wearing and past the barrier of her brassiere. I doubt that my expectations of what I might find there had any form, but I remembered what Abraham had said about Jill’s breasts. Everything was true, only Ruthie’s breasts were still more wonderful than Abraham’s account of Jill’s. It occurred to me years later that the main difference may have been a weakness in Abraham’s powers of expression. The glorious softness of Ruthie’s flesh and the smoothness of her skin were a revelation of the wonders to be found in the female body, but not just any female body. I could not even think in those terms about any girl other than Ruthie.

  Her developing breasts were not big, perhaps half the size of tennis balls, the nipples pointing slightly upward. While I stroked them, her eyes were closed and she seemed to be breathing through her mouth. Between gasps, she turned her mouth towards mine to be kissed.

  I managed to loosen her bra, not an easy accomplishment for a boy whose only experience of them was the few times he had noticed, without paying serious attention, those of my mother and sisters as they hung on the washing line. A few more buttons of her blouse popped open easily and my lips were drawn to her nipples.

  The gentle suction of my lips on her nipples was suddenly more than Ruthie could allow. She pulled my hand away and leapt to her feet, reconnecting straps and buttons as she rose. I followed clumsily, trying to tuck my erection into some position that would conceal its existence.

  My whole body was asking her the same question and my face must have reflected it, because she answered without my having put it into words. ‘We are going to do it. I know we are going to do it, but not yet. I’m not ready yet.’ The anxiety in her face was asking me to understand that it had to be this way. ‘You will be the first one. I hope you will be the only one, but not yet. Please not yet.’