My writing was interrupted, but I was glad of that. Both the break and seeing her again brought back memories that had been elusive.
On the way back to the airport when her two weeks were up, she asked, ‘You introduced me to no women?’
‘Doesn’t Sharon count?’
‘Not yet. In any case, Nathan and Rochelle introduced her.’ She punched me playfully on the upper arm. ‘No sex in your life now?’ The little gleam in her eye said that she knew about the ups and downs of such matters and that, whatever the situation was, she understood.
‘None,’ I told her.
‘Started young, finished early, huh?’ This was followed by the sudden burst of the laughter I had heard often over the last two weeks and many times in the years before. I joined in the laughter. What else was there to do? But she was not finished yet. ‘You may not know it, but that Sharon’s got plans for you.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘She’s very straight-laced.’
‘Playing hard to get, is she? Women who play hard to get usually have long-term plans.’ Again the squawk of laughter. ‘You won’t have to make a move. She’s already planning the next one.’ She watched my face from the corners of her eyes, a sly, knowing look.
We were on the airport concourse before I asked what I had been wanting to ask all along, what she had been prepared to talk about, but I had purposefully avoided. ‘Does she seem happy?’
She knew I did not mean Sharon. ‘I think she’s a tough adult doing her time. No, I don’t think she’s very happy. I don’t think it’s been the greatest marriage.’ I said nothing in response. She went on, ‘I also met her once in those days, remember?’
‘I think I remember something.’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t remember when we both know you do.’
‘All right.’
‘Why do you pretend that you don’t remember?’
‘That way you don’t have to discuss things.’
‘Well, I did meet her. I liked her. She’s great. She’s been in aid organisations all her life, like me. And she still lives in that same house, she and her husband. I think her mother’s dead and she has kids.’ She looked at me with raised eyebrows, a quizzical expression that I had seen before when something really puzzled her. ‘I often wondered about Joan. You never had much in common with her.’
‘I know.’
‘The only thing about her was her looks, the long dark hair, the Mediterranean complexion, lean figure, how much she was like Ruthie, in fact.’
‘I know. Let’s not talk about it.’
‘Have you ever?’
‘Talked about it? No.’
‘And Mama? Do you think about Mama?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must come back to see her at least once. She’s still clear-headed. If she dies and you haven’t seen her, you’ll always regret it.’
‘I know.’
‘You heard about her cancer?’
‘Yes.’
‘She may get over it, but you must come soon, she’s not young any more.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Tell Nathan you must have a week off. Tell him it’s a family matter. He’s a good man. He’ll understand.’
Michie had always been a pushy one, organising the lives of all around her, but I knew she was right about this. ‘I’ll see,’ I told her.
‘You should do it.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘It all happened so long ago. You can go back to Mama now.’
This time I kept silent. She was looking at me in the same way, as if there was more. But for me there had been enough. I had given her the only answer I had. We had a little time before boarding. ‘Coffee?’ I asked.
After her flight had left and I was driving to my rented house overlooking the bay, I did think about Mama and her cancer. I thought about how she had cared for me throughout my youth and childhood, how deep her love had obviously been. I also thought about why I had not contacted her in more than thirty years. She had always been the one who held us together as a family. The whole family would have fallen apart and all gone our separate ways, never to look back, if it had been left to the strange, silent man she had married.
fifty-eight
Almost exactly a year after I started working for Nathan, I went to the funeral of his father. It was the first time I had been to a Jewish funeral, but the main ingredients were much the same as the Christian funerals to which my parents had taken me as a child or Lerato’s African funeral I had attended as an adult. There were prayers and some singing, but most of all there were the speeches. As in all funerals, if you went by the speeches, the deceased had been a saint, the purveyor of only good thoughts and deeds.
I had the idea that men and women would be seated separately, but it was not so. Sharon sat next to me and accepted my offered handkerchief when a speaker’s memory of her grandfather moved her to tears. The night before, we had made love for the first time. ‘Not circumcised,’ she had said. ‘This is my first time with a man who is not circumcised.’
‘Not the last, I hope.’
‘No, not the last. Let’s make sure that it’s not the last.’
Unlike my lingering with my desktop operator, I stayed the whole night and she did not seem to mind my snoring. She slept close, her head against my chest for much of the night. It had taken a while before she had given herself to me, but now I could feel that there was nothing in reserve. This was a woman who did not give herself readily, but when she did, she gave herself completely.
It was our lovemaking the next morning that was the biggest surprise. She looked up into my eyes and laughed. And I laughed with her. I had never before laughed with a woman while I was making love to her. This was something so new to me that I thought about it many times every day in the days that followed. There seemed to be an element of the miraculous in it.
To my surprise, Nathan and I were alone in the car on the way home from the funeral. Rochelle and Sharon had decided to travel with Rochelle’s sister, Nathan said. As he drove, he told me about his father and it seemed that he really had been a good man. ‘He did his best for his family,’ Nathan said. ‘He never cheated anyone and anything I know about business, he taught me.’
‘Not a bad epitaph,’ I said, ‘that a man was respected by his children.’
‘That’s true,’ Nathan said. ‘Those are wise words.’
It was only when he stopped at a coffee shop along the way that I realised there was more to our travelling alone than Rochelle wanting a bit of her sister’s company. He selected the quietest table in the place and ordered coffee with cream from a young waitress who had been flirting with four boys at a table near the other end of the place. I waited for Nathan to start.
‘We’ve worked well together,’ he said.
‘We have,’ I agreed.
‘You have a lot of experience that is different to mine. We’ve been a good team. And we get along.’
‘We do.’
‘I like the way we work together. We talk things over. If there are problems, we sort them out. That was also my father’s way.’
I leant forward to try to add emphasis to my words. ‘Nathan, if your father was as good a man as you are, then he was an excellent man. Working with you has been one of the pleasures of my life.’
Nathan blushed a little at that, but tried not to let his pleasure show. ‘Thank you,’ he said, doing his best to sound modest. ‘The business has done better since you’ve been with us. We’ve built up our revenues and we’ve had to hire three more people to cope. It’s also been easier on me. With another senior man in the place, things go better. Together we can go on building up the business.’
So it was the future that was on Nathan’s mind. ‘As long as I’m with you, I’ll do what I can to help,’ I told him.
‘Chris, I want more than that from you. I want us to be partners.’
‘That’s very generous—’ I started.
‘I’m not saying I’ll give it to you, but I’ll sell you a partnership at a good price.’ He really was a good man and working with him truly had been a pleasure. I knew he would make me a more than decent offer.
‘Nathan, if I were going into business again with anyone, I’d like you to be the one,’ I said.
‘You’re turning me down?’ He sounded a little plaintive. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve loved it here. I love this coast and I enjoy working with you. As I keep saying, our association has been great—’
I was looking for the words to express myself when he cut in. ‘But what? What can be the reason?’
‘I’m not sure that this will ever be my home.’
‘You want to go back to Africa?’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘You don’t feel at home here?’
‘Not really. I thought I would.’
‘You feel at home there?’
‘No, not entirely.’
‘So maybe you will stay?’
‘There’s also the child. He’s on yet another continent.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Joseph.’
‘Are you close?’
‘Not close enough. My relationship with him has improved since the divorce though. The leave I’ve taken has been to visit him and I need to go again.’
‘Of course. I can understand about Joseph. Go and visit him. Go regularly. That doesn’t need to affect our working together.’
‘Thank you, but …’ Finding words to explain what I felt was not easy. I was not sure I could explain it very well even to myself.
‘Your mother’s still alive, I think.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Sharon? Have you thought about her? I think she likes you.’
‘I think about her all the time, but please don’t ask me more about the future.’
He was silent for a while, looking puzzled at what was clearly an unexpected refusal. ‘Perhaps something can be worked out.’
‘Perhaps.’
With a shrug, he seemed to expel the thoughts of our possible partnership and my relationship with the niece he loved. ‘You never met my dad, did you?’
‘No, I never did.’
‘He would’ve liked you.’
‘I’m sure I would have liked him.’
‘I didn’t know him as a young man. He was over forty when I was born. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a young father, playing ball and so on. Was your dad a young father?’
‘He was thirty-five when I was born.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘No. He died quite young.’
‘How old?’ Nathan looked troubled at the thought.
‘Fifty-one.’
‘That is young. What of?’
‘He had a heart attack. It had been a difficult year for all of us.’
fifty-nine
I had been in Johannesburg just over a month when I received the news of my father’s death from Annie. By that time I was living in a small apartment in downtown Johannesburg. Rents in the city centre were very low. The migration of white people to the suburbs was almost complete and other South Africans were not yet allowed to seek accommodation in the city. The result was that perhaps one in ten apartments in the city centre was occupied. One owner of a building had committed suicide and it was rumoured that some others were on the verge. Ordinarily there would have been legal problems concerning a fifteen-year-old signing the lease, but under the circumstances, landlords and their agents were not fussy.
My apartment had to function as both home and office. I slept in the lounge on a beanbag and worked from the bedroom. I had my own phone and recorder. I had tried the YMCA for a few weeks, but it had been almost impossible for clients to contact me there. If Dog Box Flowers was to stand a chance, I needed my own place.
Soon after setting up my office, I was surprised by a letter from a Zululand attorney, telling me that Oupa had left me ten thousand rands and could I send them my bank account number by registered letter. I certainly could and they received it by return of post. It may not have been a fortune, but for the first time Dog Box Flowers had some capital, enough for me to hire an eighteen-year-old black girl as an assistant.
The business of my emancipation from my parents’ control was not altogether without formalities. There was some correspondence with Mister Harvey, forms had to be signed in front of a magistrate and my identity documents had to be confirmed at the Johannesburg office of my father’s own department. A social worker, who had been alerted by someone, visited me three times, but lost interest after that.
One afternoon, after spending most of the day trying to interest business owners in my services, I found Annie’s message on the recorder. ‘You should come now,’ the recording said. ‘Papa died last night. There’s just Michie and me and Mama now. You have to come home.’
Much later Annie told me that he had seemed to be tired all the time after I left. Then one evening, after an ordinary day at the office, he had come home complaining that he was exhausted. It seems that he had gone to the bedroom and poured himself a brandy, as he so often did. Mama had found him. The drink was on the bedside table, but it had not been touched. It had been a heart attack. According to Annie, Mama had been deeply shocked, but had not cried once. At least neither Annie nor Michie ever saw her cry. Annie told me that he had never spoken about me at home after the day I escaped from Point Road Police Station.
His death seemed impossible. He was never going to die, at least not in my lifetime. He had been destined to live forever, the beacon to which every Afrikaner boy should aspire, at least the one to which I should aspire.
I had often thought about Mama and my sisters since arriving in Johannesburg, but hardly ever about my father. But now, in death, I could not avoid him. Even after all that had passed, I was not yet sure that his actions and the work he had done were truly evil. Every moment of every day of my life till the time I left Durban had reinforced the view of the world for which he stood. His refusal to accept my betrayal rose to the surface now. Not my son, he had first told Mama, then the police. My son would never do such a thing, not my son. But he had known all along. The drunken mumbling in the early hours while everyone else was asleep had told the story.
I’m sorry, my thoughts told my dead father, I’m sorry that I couldn’t do what you expected of me. Please forgive me. I’m sorry I was not the boy you wanted, the boy you needed.
But, tell me, why did you have to take such revenge on the Petersons? It wasn’t just Snake, was it? Mister Harvey said it was you too. Was Auntie Pearl’s job and Uncle William’s position going to do so much damage? Or Uncle William’s nice house and his family? Were they going to do any damage at all? If you had to revenge yourself, why not just take it out on me?
Something else, that I had not admitted to myself so far, entered my thoughts. It was that unthinkingly I was applying to him the contempt the entrepreneur feels for the civil servant. If he was so damned important, I asked myself, why was he doing the rubbish that he was doing? Why had he not gone into business and made some real money? His father was a businessman. Oupa’s farm was a business. But my father had hidden his weaknesses under the pretence of saving the nation, protecting his people. A small people and a vulnerable one, he had said so often. Give me six months in Johannesburg, I thought, and I’ll be making more money than he ever did in his life. I remembered the night on the farm when I had overheard him telling Oupa that he had not been a success. Maybe he was right.
And why did you let me go that easily? I asked him. If you were that weighed down by responsibilities, why did this one mean so little to you? Maybe we could still have been father and son, I thought. Maybe, if you had been just a little more yielding, it would have been possible. And yet I knew it was not so. He could no more have continued being my father, than I could have continued being his son.
My father’s death continued to trouble me, un
til I buried all thinking under an avalanche of activity, working sixteen hours a day, every day, to make a success of Dog Box Flowers. I think the effect on me of his death was more intense than I realised at the time. Like so much else, I may just have hidden it from myself, blanketing conscious awareness until there was no pain. Little more than a dull uneasiness remained.
My thoughts of my father the day that I received the news of his death were locked into a landscape of confusion. He remained the man who had wept for what he thought of as my descent into sin. For a long time afterwards, whenever my thoughts dwelt on him, they remained an illogical maelstrom of emotion. It was much later that my guilt at what I had done to the Petersons and my guilt at the many things my father had done, drove me to activism.
I did not refuse Annie, but I did not do what she wanted me to do. I felt that my freedom was too new to go home yet. Perhaps later I’ll be able to go home, I told myself. But not yet. After a few months or a year or once I’ve made some money in Dog Box Flowers, then I’ll go.
But it always was too soon to go back and I never made enough money, not enough to satisfy myself. So ultimately I never did go. I learnt later that Mama would receive my father’s pension and that Michie would have to go to work after she finished school. University would have to wait.
I sent flowers, but I did not attend the funeral.
sixty
I told Nathan none of this. It was not something I had ever spoken about, not even to my sisters. But now I was going back. The day before I was due to leave, I took Sharon to the cove where I had spent the day with the desktop artist. Sitting on the sand at the top of the beach, I tried to explain that there were matters that needed sorting out in Africa.
‘What sort of matters?’ she asked.
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