The Alphabet of Birds

by SJ Naudé

  She gestures excitedly in the direction of a set of textile samples next to a catalogue of sofas. She turns her head, holds up two pieces of cloth.

  ‘What do you think? Isn’t it a charming combination?’ When Sandrien retreats, she calls with greater urgency. ‘Look,’ she gestures, ‘look!’

  She points to sample paint patches against the wall, shades of grey.

  Away from the noise and dust, Sandrien pushes open the door of a cubicle in the ladies. Lerato is sitting on the toilet, skirt around her high heels. She is studying a sheet on her lap: a sketch of an interior.

  ‘Sorry,’ Sandrien mutters, and pulls the door shut.

  She considers discussing the issue of the basin through the cubicle door, but then stumbles out.

  ‘Wait!’ Lerato shouts from the cubicle. ‘Come and see the mock-up of my new office!’

  When the coldroom’s doors swing open, a cloud of vapour rises into the heat. The coffin appears from the cloud. Two men in overalls and gloves are pushing the trolley. The coffin is made of pine, but has been stained and varnished to look like ebony. It is topped by a bouquet of arum lilies. The chilled flowers look fresh and resilient. No sign yet of how fast they will wilt. The carriers lift the coffin and the mourners fall in line behind them. The men in overalls stand back and lock the doors, their delivery complete. Sandrien keeps at a distance. There is singing in the sun, a woman who collapses and has to be held up. The coffin descends into the grave. Afterwards she shakes hands with the family. They react with politeness, distance.

  ‘What do you think of my fridge?’

  It is Manie Maritz who has approached Sandrien from behind. The funeral is on Mara, Manie’s farm near Steynsburg. Manie is an acquaintance of Kobus’s and one of the few farmers who hasn’t sold out to the hunting-farm developers. She arches a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘There.’ He points to the coldroom from which the coffin appeared. ‘That’s where we keep them fresh. We used to refrigerate slaughtered cattle and game in there. It needed only a few adjustments.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Manie. I see you have some sort of business here.’

  He smiles. ‘Not quite what one had in mind, but one has to make do.’

  Sandrien looks at the people still milling around the grave. Where before there was a field, there are now rows and rows of granite graves, some with turrets or cherubs.

  ‘How do these people afford all of this?’

  ‘This is only the beginning,’ he says. ‘There’s a big feast coming.’

  He points to a concrete surface on the other side of the graves on which a large tent has been erected. The mourners are making their way there. ‘There’ll be slaughtering now. I have two cows ready. They pay in instalments; it’s a long-term business. One has to manage it carefully. I have arrangements with farmers to dock wages if payments become overdue.’

  Sandrien leaves without saying goodbye to Manie. She will not be attending another funeral.

  Sandrien and Kobus leave for Bloemfontein before dawn. She is going for her quarterly tests and scans. She had wanted to cancel her appointment, but knew Kobus would refuse. On the sonar screen in the oncology ward they see how the antihormone treatment is making the milk gland in the remaining breast atrophy. After the hospital visit, they pick up the twins at the school residence for lunch. When she sees them, she realises she has not spoken to either of them for over a month. They sit with the girls in a shopping centre over bland plates of food. The twins are sullen, as is usual these days. Sandrien suddenly becomes impatient to be back in her van, working. She forces herself to stay put.

  In the car on the way back from the residence, Kobus peers at her furtively. He rests his hand on hers. ‘You don’t have to feel guilty about these privileges, even though there are people dying in the dust. The world is a broken place, but you did not create it.’

  She pulls her hand from underneath his, looks out at the pale winter lawns.

  On her way from one outer corner of the territory she serves with her van to the other, she stops at home.

  ‘When last did you visit your mother?’ Kobus asks. ‘I was there this morning to take supplies, and she’s not looking good.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Have you forgotten, Sandrien? She’s over ninety years old. She’s fraying around the edges, she’s drifting into oblivion. You’ve hardly been there once in the months since you’ve been back. And that little maid who looks after her—’

  ‘Brenda, Grace’s daughter.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s not working. Too brusque, too little empathy.’

  ‘I’ll drop by.’

  Her head is bent forward; she has started writing medicine labels at the dining table and sticking them onto amber bottles.

  ‘You’re not looking that good, either. You’re losing weight.’

  She keeps writing.

  Kobus is on his way out, to church. He knows better than to ask her along.

  ‘Surely one wants to be part of some community?’ he said one previous Sunday morning.

  She was sitting at the dining table, writing on vaccination cards.

  ‘I have my community,’ she said without looking up.

  Now too she keeps on writing. Closing the door, he sighs quietly.

  ‘It isn’t looking good,’ her oncologist says the following day on the phone.

  ‘The enzyme tests are suggesting renewed cancer growth, but we need further tests to determine the location. Can we make an appointment for you?’

  ‘It won’t be necessary, thank you.’

  He remains silent for a moment.

  ‘Surely you understand the need, the urgency.’

  ‘I appreciate your concern.’

  For days on end she tries to get hold of Walter Mabunda at his provincial offices. As a last resort, she calls Mrs Nyathi.

  ‘Do you still have contact with Walter?’ she asks. ‘Would you know how to get hold of him?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Mrs Nyathi, ‘we talk often. He was once my husband, after all!’ She laughs.

  Sandrien remembers the set of friendly teeth. Mrs Nyathi always catches her unawares.

  ‘No, that is news to me, Mrs Nyathi. I was under the impression that you’re a widow.’

  Half an hour later Walter calls Sandrien. She takes a deep breath. ‘I am informed that you’re an important man now, Walter.’

  He laughs his lazy little laugh.

  ‘You know, I serve the community according to my abilities, Sandrien. Make my contributions where I can.’

  ‘Well, Walter, I similarly try to make my contributions. But there is one respect in which I feel myself severely handicapped.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘See, I run a mobile clinic in the municipal district of Aliwal North. And this brings me in contact with the ill, especially the large number of people who, as you know, have HIV or Aids in advanced stages. People are dying, Walter. My patients are dying in droves. How would I go about obtaining antiretrovirals for them? How do we turn things around? Government policy about this, after all, changed some time ago.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says, ‘Edith Nyathi told me what you were doing these days. You may know that we want to provincialise health. We could use someone like you well.’

  ‘You know, Walter, I feel flattered. Politics aside, though, what about the antiretrovirals?’

  ‘Well, you know, it’s a complex matter, this. Funds, budgets, jurisdictions, infrastructure … You can imagine. Hmm.’ The alto voice, the camp voice.

  She remembers the finely stitched shoes, his beer belly underneath the perfectly ironed shirt. For a while neither of them says anything; they are contemplating the silence.

  ‘You can come and discuss the matter with me here,’ he says.

  ‘If it would make a difference, yes,’ she says. ‘Port Elizabeth is far, though, and I prefer to be near my patients if possible, not to spend an entire day away from them.’

  ‘Hmm,’ h
e says. ‘Why don’t you come to PE for a weekend? Come and stay with me. I have a swimming pool and all.’

  A feeling of despair takes hold of her.

  When she does not immediately object, he continues: ‘I have no doubt that you are still as beautiful a woman as always.’

  She takes a breath. ‘Walter, I am desperate to obtain medication. Over the last eight months I have seen eight people die. What can be done?’

  ‘Hmm, come for a weekend. You won’t regret it. A swimming pool and all.’

  She visits Lerato once again. She is cool towards Sandrien. Has she got wind of the fact that Sandrien approached the province?

  ‘I don’t want to tell you something that you don’t already know, Lerato, but there is enormous urgency. As I understand it, the central government policy is now clear, namely universal provision—’

  ‘Understand one thing,’ Lerato says, her finger tapping irascibly on the desk, ‘we don’t do hurry here.’ She presses an index finger to her chest. ‘I set the pace.’

  Seven days a week, she travels the dirt roads and tarred roads. The backlog on vaccinations has been cleared. Pap smears, blood tests and children’s diseases make up the routine. She is waging a war against the odds with her Aids patients. She feeds them tiny spoonfuls of porridge. She looks after the children; helps the children to look after sick parents; helps orphans to look after younger children. She treats infections, tries to halt diarrhoea. She rubs feet. (Gently; the bone is just below the skin.) Early on a Sunday morning she loses another. A man, completely blind, walks straight into the veld. He falls on his face and stays like that.

  ‘I think there is the prospect of a solution, Sandrien. I think we can stay at Dorrebult, make it work again.’

  Kobus has returned from Venterstad’s bar. His eyes are shining. As always after a few drinks, he is talkative and awkward, like a boy who has done something naughty.

  ‘Manie from Mara was in the bar. He has a proposal. You know about his funeral business. He says you’ve seen his facilities. At first, he only set aside a hectare or so for graves. It’s almost full – he’s expanding. He’s also an undertaker. He provides coffins, embalming, flowers, the lot. The coldrooms that they previously used for cattle carcasses now chill cadavers. These people’s funerals are also feasts, you know, they slaughter cattle every time. The profits are phenomenal.’

  She stares at him. His face is beaming.

  ‘He wants to sell off land, and all his cattle, to invest more in the business. In the future, he wants me to be the exclusive provider of slaughter oxen.’

  She does not say a word. He takes a deep breath.

  ‘Sandrien, you know we are here on borrowed time. Even on Dorrebult and Helpmekaar together, we can’t make a living from the land. When last did we earn a liveable income? Four, five years back? Input costs are going through the roof, prices are falling. All that works here now is game farming. And where would we get the capital to develop a game farm?’

  ‘Why don’t we just burn the dead in piles outside?’ She hears herself, her tone calm and lethal. ‘Then we’ll live in eternal shadow, with a cloud of ash between us and the sun.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Sandrien.’ He is now pleading like a child. ‘The dead must be buried. And what else? Do you think your endless driving with a steel box on dusty roads pays more than the children’s school fees? All you’re doing is alienating our neighbours. You’re making the owners of the hunting lodges queasy, you’re startling their guests. I can see how they suddenly fall silent when I enter the bar.’ He sits back, his shoulders hanging. ‘I must do something, Sandrien, we must live. One must adapt, one must naturalise. In this way, you start belonging here.’

  When she speaks again, she does so slowly and emphatically. ‘If you make as much as a cent from the slaughter, Kobus, I will never look you in the eye again.’

  A shadow across his face.

  Between Knapdaar and Burgersdorp the van swerves and skids some distance across the dust. It comes to a halt with the front end in a thorn bush. Her chest has hit the steering wheel with a thud. She gets out and walks around the vehicle. The left front tyre has burst. Oil is dripping through the grid over dry leaves. She pushes the vehicle a few metres back, almost collapsing from exertion. She sits down in the dust. On the horizon appears a cloud the size of a man’s fist. She takes dust in her hands and rubs it in her hair, over her white uniform. It sifts through her lashes. When the silence releases the sobs, she stuffs a handful in her mouth, but it does not dampen the sound. The sobs multiply and roll in a cloud back to her across the plain. Her teeth grind on dust. She opens her eyes. The bush bursts into flame. It hisses like a blowtorch. She sits utterly still until it burns down to the roots, until the ash settles in a pattern around the stump.

  She gets up.

  Where the spare tyre should be is an empty hole. She drives to Aliwal North with rubber flapping around the rim. She parks in front of the municipal office. Lerato is pushing two combs in her hair in front of the mirror behind her desk. She observes Sandrien in the mirror, swivels around on her chair. Dust is sifting from Sandrien, her eyes are glowing.

  ‘Sit,’ says Lerato. She points to the chair.

  ‘People are lying out there, dying,’ Sandrien says from where she is standing, ‘like dried-out hides. Where are my ARVs?’

  ‘I have told you,’ Lerato’s face is hard, ‘we can only do what we can do.’

  Sandrien hits her open hand on the desk, so hard that small clumps of earth fall out of a plant pot.

  ‘No!’ Sandrien pulls in her fists against her stomach. ‘We can do more, much more!’ We can find the divine fibres in our weak flesh, the undiscovered grace in our entrails! she wants to add, but she has said enough.

  Lerato gets up with less effort than might be expected of her bulky frame.

  ‘Out,’ she says in a deep, cold voice. ‘If you can’t show me respect, then you may as well go to Scandinavia. If you don’t like your job, don’t think we need you here.’

  When she returns, Kobus is sitting in the dusk at the dining table. He has spoken to her oncologist. ‘So, now you’re going to sacrifice yourself for this cause with which you have burdened yourself,’ he says. ‘You’re now going to obliterate your body.’

  ‘It’s not me, it is the course of the disease. I’ve tried treatment. Whether I want to endure further interventions is surely a personal choice.’

  He swallows, peering into the dark corner of the room. He wipes his eyes. She does not say anything. The line of his chin hardens.

  ‘What sense does it make to surrender everything for the sake of a struggle within a system that despises you?’

  ‘The system is irrelevant, it’s about the victims. They are my struggle. I don’t want to reduce what’s left of my life to the parochial sorrow of the privileged cancer sufferer.’

  It is now almost completely dark.

  ‘Do you remember,’ he says, ‘how a hunter’s dog once got its paw stuck in a jackal fence here on the farm? When I got there, the leg was so infected that the dog would not allow me near it. I could let him suffer or could let myself be torn apart. I shot him through the head. In this way I brought relief. It affected me, but this was what I could do.’

  She looks at his outline. The light glints on his eyebrows.

  It is her turn. ‘Do you remember the time when a dog made its way into the sheep-pen? How cruelly dogs play with trapped sheep? How we disinfected cotton thread and spent all night in the kitchen sewing up – no, weaving back together – shredded stomachs? How raw our hands were? How we didn’t stop until they were whole again?’

  She keeps her eyes fixed on the furthest point in the dirt road. She notices that when she keeps up the speed she stays awake. She keeps getting stronger. From here in her cab, her control room, she will be able to keep everyone safe. Soon she will be able to carry all the dying. She will hold them in the palm of her hand, the ill of the Eastern Cape – no, of the entire scorched hinter
land. When she enters one of the game farms, she notices how the Americans with their shiny guns observe her from their Jeeps. Probably a pitiful sight in her dust-smeared van and soiled uniform. Probably just a matter of time before the owners forbid the mad woman with the wild hair from entering their land.

  She is dizzy when she arrives at Shirley’s office. She is now watching over her patients at night. She drips water through dry lips, lays damp cloths on hot foreheads. Now and then she takes a moment for herself, gulping fresh air outside, bathing in the cool flood of starlight. Then she stoops again, entering under low corrugated iron or reed-and-mud ceilings. Next to drums in which coal hisses, she sings shy songs she makes up to bring a little peace.

  Shirley looks Sandrien up and down when she steps onto her office carpet. There is a voice on her speakerphone. She picks up the receiver, brushes over her pencil skirt as if it has dust on it too. She cups one hand over her mouth, cuts off the phone conversation.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she says to Sandrien, ‘our biggest donors have started shifting their funds to prevention. And in future, the emphasis will be on abstinence campaigns, rather than condom use. The distribution of antiretrovirals may well be phased out.’ She shrugs her shoulders in an exculpatory fashion. ‘These are the values of Middle America: we’re talking faith-based organisations. Those are the ones now holding the money. And the donors elect our board. We have to move with the times.’

  ‘On a personal note,’ she continues, ‘I’m on my way back to the US. Been offered work in Houston. I’ve been outside the laboratory for too long. Yes, probably less excitement than here. But Houston has good steaks, so I hear.’

  She smiles unaccountably. Sandrien is certain the voice on the phone earlier was Lerato’s.

  Next to the television a woman is standing in the dark. It is her goatskin wristband on which Sandrien focuses. On the hissing television screen: electric snow. It is the first time in weeks that Sandrien is visiting the Helpmekaar homestead. It is six o’clock, the winter afternoon heat over, the curtains all closed. She was relieved to find her mother asleep. While searching for Brenda, she heard something in the erstwhile guest room. Then she encountered this stranger. And she knows what that wristband means.