I would have gone downstream to find the last place I had ever seen him, the spot where Uncle Stefan had knelt over his body. But a high fence that had been erected across either bank blocked my way. Somewhere downstream were the narrows where the logs had dammed the river, forming a temporary pond and a roaring overflow. Banks that had been muddy or covered in grass had since disappeared under a covering of ferns. None of it was familiar in the daylight of this innocent afternoon. But, changed as it was, I knew it as the place where Abraham had died.
I had been gone too long. I knew that I should have come back sooner. I had many opportunities, but going there would have taken more than opportunity. In all those years, I had avoided the place the way I had avoided so many places. Why I had come back now was not clear to me. Perhaps it never would be. Perhaps saying goodbye to an old lady who had forgotten the worst things was enough reason.
Forgive me, I asked Abraham. Forgive me for that night. Forgive me for letting go of you. Forgive me for not finding you in the river. Forgive me for not drowning with you the way I should have. Forgive me too for waiting so long before asking your forgiveness. Christ, Abraham, please forgive me for all of it.
It was at least half an hour before I felt I could leave the bridge.
Whether or not Abraham was able to hear me, I could not say. When I eventually left, I drove to Umhlanga Rocks, aiming for the same beach where Ruthie had come to me after my long bike ride from Oupa’s farm. The sorrow I had brought with me had not been left at the bridge. It was still with me and as strong as it had ever been.
I avoided Burman Bush and the place where she and I had made love, and the house where Uncle William had lived. The route I took passed the place where we had so often met in the sugar cane. But the cane land had since disappeared under a new suburb.
I found a café on the boulevard that overlooked the sea and drank a glass of wine. It was sharply dry on the tongue, a little too sharp for my taste and the time I took to drink it was too short. I asked myself why I was hurrying. There was no need for haste. I ordered a sandwich and another glass of wine, consuming them both slowly and this time admitting to myself that wine and sandwich were both time-wasting devices, nothing more than that.
It was late afternoon by now, but the sea was a rich blue, the grey of evening still some way off. Out beyond the shark nets kids were riding their surfboards, waiting for the one great wave that would make the afternoon worthwhile, just as others had been doing three decades before. As I watched, one of them became impatient and tried to catch a wave that was breaking too close in. He lost it before it broke and turned to paddle out again.
Then, in a moment, the afternoon changed. Something settled on me that I can only describe as peace. It was not something I had summoned. I knew that I would not be able to hold onto it or prolong its visit. It came unexpectedly, from a source unknown, and rested on me for a long moment, perhaps more than a moment. I remembered a similar peace only once before as a boy of thirteen. We were gathered as a family under the thorn trees on Oupa’s farm after dinner. We were all there, Abraham, the girls and our parents and grandparents.
When I looked at my watch, I found that I had been there for more than an hour. Now I went down to the beach where the tide was out. For at least another hour I walked along the hard, damp, low-tide sand, where I had jogged as a child. The sun was sinking low on the inland side and cast sharp momentary reflections off the waves. The sky was deep blue, a rich colour. The colour of the sea richer still. My sorrow was gone and so was Abraham’s presence.
Driving back in the direction of the city, I deliberately took the route through La Lucia. The narrow strip of dunes where Ruthie and I had been seen was unchanged. Passing through Red Hill, I eased the car down the long gradient to the Old North Coast Road. From there I found the road that led up the hill into Greenwood Park. I was travelling so slowly now that another driver hooted for me to give way. I pulled to the side to let him pass. He came past quickly, without glancing at me.
Greenwood Park had also changed. The houses looked better kept than when I had first seen them as a teenage boy. Some seemed to have been replaced by newer buildings. Fewer kids were playing in the streets and some of the houses had the sort of security measures that were common across the valley in Red Hill. The afternoon sun was low in the sky by now, casting the shadows of the houses across the street. The south-facing houses were already in deep shadow.
To my surprise, I did not immediately find the house I was looking for. Only when I was sure that I had passed it, did I stop and turn back. This time I drove at little more than jogging pace and discovered why I had missed it. Extensive renovations had been carried out in front, extending the building and cutting away a piece of the garden.
In front of the house, a fireplace had been built on one side. A thin plume of smoke was rising from it, a prelude probably to a braaivleis, the kind we used to have at home and on Oupa’s farm. No one seemed to be tending the fire.
I stopped the car some thirty metres down the road and switched off the engine. The curtains of the house had not been drawn and I could see movement through lace, but no more than that.
As I watched, the door of the house opened and a boy came out into the narrow strip of garden that remained. He was carrying a cricket bat and a tennis ball. Almost unconsciously, barely looking at the ball, he started bouncing it on the blade of the bat, first softly, then slowly harder, sending it higher into the air. He was a lean, loose-limbed kid of perhaps twelve or thirteen.
Coming down the steps, he hit the ball off the edge of the bat. It flew over the low garden wall and into the street. It bounced a few times on the unpaved verge and came rolling towards me, the boy following. Now I could see him more clearly. His skin was the light olive colour I remembered. His thick black hair curled around his ears.
The ball had come to a stop not far from where I was watching. He bounded effortlessly towards me, only slowing to avoid colliding with the car. Scooping up the ball, he straightened, then saw me. He hesitated only a moment before coming closer. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘No, I don’t need any help.’
‘I just thought you might be looking for someone.’
‘I’m all right. I appreciate the offer though.’
‘That’s all right, sir.’ Now that he was close, I could see how dark his eyes were, so deep that I could not see where the pupils stopped and the irises began.
I looked at the bat he was swinging idly in his right hand. ‘You play cricket?’
‘Yes, I love it.’
‘And football? Do you play football?’
‘Just a little bit in the street here. Sometimes after school or on Saturday afternoons.’ He smiled at me, as he turned to go. ‘Goodbye, sir.’
I called to him. ‘You live over there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Your name Peterson?’
‘No. That was my mother’s surname before she got married to my father. You know our family?’
‘No, I don’t think I know your family,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the offer to help me.’
‘It’s a pleasure, sir.’
With that he strolled back towards the gate of his home, again bouncing the ball on his bat. He was a truly nice kid and I would have liked to talk to him for longer, but it was time for me to leave.
I had started the car when a sound from the house drew my attention and I again switched off the engine. It was a woman’s laughter and it had lasted only a moment. Again I started the engine and this time I edged the car forward until I was level with the big window that I knew had once opened into the living room. The laughter again reached out to me from the house. I believed that it sounded like a small silver bell, a sound I had heard as a teenage boy. But perhaps it was not. I had not asked the boy with the cricket bat if he had sisters.
The lighting inside the house was dim. I could make out a movement behind the curtains, nothing more. The laught
er came a third time. I paused only for another moment, then allowed the car to roll forward. Whatever business I once had in that house had been completed a long time before.
The boy with the cricket bat waved and I waved back. I eased the car forward and it gathered speed slowly.
On another continent, in what seemed to be another life, a different woman had laughed with me while we made love. She was real. This other laughter through the curtains of the house I still thought of as the Peterson home was not, at least not for me.
At the bottom of the long slope, traffic was buzzing past on the Old North Coast Road. The evening air had that velvet-soft feel that you only find in tropical seaside places. I opened the window to let it into the car. In Red Hill, on the other side of the narrow valley, the lights of the houses were already coming on.
The Classifier Page 44