by Eben Venter
‘We’ll see.’
Emile unties his apron and crams it into his rucksack, and walks out under Mattheüs’s arm.
‘You mustn’t be angry. S’il vous plaît, Matthew.’ And only then does he scrape up the courage to ask Mattheüs whether he’ll fetch his child from the airport on Saturday.
He goes to the cold room, where he covers the soaking lentils with a cloth, locks the cold-room door, takes out the money, already counted, and puts it in the special reinforced leather bag that he has specially bought, which on cooler evenings he wears under his shirt or between his shirt and jacket, then he switches off the lights, locks the door and the steel gate, and walks briskly to the back of the building where his bakkie is parked.
He keeps coming back to the image of his father, which he cannot consign to oblivion. The ice-cold white log pushed into one of those oblong fridges. (That’s not Pa, Sissy.) The night before the funeral, in the sultry, smoky air of Observatory, with taxis going up and down Main, that’s the only way he can think of him: with a label around his big toe? His father made into a dead object. Rouge on his lips and cloth stuffed into his cheeks to fill out the hollow grimace. He resolves once again not to go and have a look at him.
When he’s switched on the ignition (B Duiker, number 102 or whatever, written on the label with an ugly old blue ballpoint pen) he remembers the Beretta. Uncle Hannes’s. He can’t really think of that weapon as his. It belongs to, but not with, Uncle Hannes. In that lonely rondavel on that man-forsaken farm, the poor man can no longer trust himself with it. It was never an altruistic gift.
He hides the leather bag with its cash under the seat, quickly unlocks again, jiggles the pistol in its pouch out from under the lentils, and this time pushes it into the front of his pants, ‘You can wear it like that too, Matt, it’s what you call a quick-draw position,’ Uncle Hannes explained and they both had to laugh; it’s so obviously gangster-style, and Matt such a pathetic candidate for a gangster.
Once again outside in the warm smoky air, this time with a Red Bull. And yes, he’ll fetch Emile’s child, it’s hardly a request anyone could refuse.
@ De Waal Drive on the way to Uncle Bennie’s funeral, Jack facebooks. It’s an auspicious day. Have you ever thought how heavy it is to take someone who was alive and is now suddenly gone and stone dead, and to shove him underground.
There’s no need for him to say anything. He sits there with the seat belt across his chest – the Mercedes belt holds you tightly – and tries to think in the way that Matt is surely thinking right now. It’s a strange privilege to attend your father’s funeral, so dressed up and all. Not going to happen to him. His father. If someone were to ask him now – he doesn’t even know where the man is from whose loins he sprang. Last time it was East London. Maybe he snuffed it a long time ago.
Some way along De Waal Drive, they’re signalled to reduce speed and to pull right over onto the shoulder. From behind looms another procession of police cars and motor bikes, the very big ones. With every available flashing light and siren and whatever switched on at full bore. In the middle of the procession of police vehicles there’s a pitch-black official car, also a Mercedes, one of those stretch jobs. And this on the day of Uncle Bennie’s funeral. Matt snorts. Matt, like no one else he knows, hates this kind of ostentatious crap. A policeman in blue signals to them to pull off even further.
‘Fuck it,’ Matt slides his window down.
And Jack, his presence of mind still intact, touches Matt’s leg. ‘Matt, just keep calm now. Please, Matt.’
‘It’s my father’s funeral. You can see we’re dressed for it,’ Matt tells the policeman.
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘But you can’t be late for your father’s funeral.’ Matt makes an appeal to the respect he knows the policeman, probably a Xhosa, has for the departed. Matt is icily calm, if that is possible. If only the policeman knew him. It’s the king of Swaziland, says the policeman. And says again how very sorry he is. And Jack believes him. He can see the man means what he says.
‘Oh, him,’ says Matt, and Jack touches his leg again – the policeman goes over to the next car that must also move further over onto the shoulder – ‘that little stoep-shitter!’
‘Little palace stoep-shitter!’
‘Tramples his people into the mud. Mud fuckhead!’
‘Fucking pap-guzzler.’
‘Virgin fucker. Slave-girl fucker. Fifty weddings or more. Twenty Mercedes S600s in his garage. If my father had to know this,’ says Matt, ‘that his son would be late for his funeral because some tin-pot king claims the whole of De Waal Drive for himself. If he had to know that!’
Jack aims his camera at the car with the king that is now almost alongside them. A policeman comes running to stop this, no photos, please, but has to rush to the next car and the next, where one after another, people are clicking away.
When the official car is right next to them, the back window glides open. Unfuckingreal, like in a movie. And King M III is sitting there, stuffed into his uniform with gold piping all over the show. It’s totally over the top. A smug fat-arse on the soft leather seat made specially for his majesty. No longer the young king with his brown biceps and his triumphant pheasant-feather crown, but an old, overfed house cat bloated with arrogance and selfishness. As plain as daylight, they see him looking at the two of them with his fat eyes, maybe because they’re also in a Mercedes. And would you fucking believe it, here’s a gnawed chicken bone that comes flying out of the window, sailing gracefully through the air. Tink, they hear it strike the right-hand side of the bonnet of Matt’s car.
‘Fuck,’ they shout together.
Mattheüs laughs so hard that the tears put out his newly lit cigarette. Jack too. Could you ever. They laugh and laugh, and when they recover, the procession has passed by. Mattheüs’s laughter has changed into a falsetto. And he has to get out to piss next to the car, traffic or no traffic.
Inside the car, Jack smells the strange odour of the fart he’s just released. Maybe Sissy’s cabbage from last night, he doesn’t recognise the green-barley smell of it. He looks over Matt’s shoulder up towards the mountain at the crowns of the pine trees. Matt is still giggling. Probably also a reaction to the last few days. How faithfully Matt nursed his father. Bless him! And then the inevitable tension that follows death. Now the man who formed such an enormous part of his life is gone. For ever and ever. How is Uncle Bennie’s son going to react to this? Or how should a son react to the death of his father? The public is going to watch Matt. Is he up to it?
Jack thinks about all these things as they swing back onto De Waal Drive and drive on to the church. He tries to imagine all of it, but stops short in a kind of fatherless vacuum. There was never anyone in his life that he had such a fraught relationship with. He can’t imagine Matt’s state of mind.
Jack again posts on Facebook: @ funeral of Matt’s father, Reformed Church, Gardens. Matt sharp in black suit, black shirt with the small cutaway collar and an off-black silk tie.
The previous evening at Matt’s place, drinks were poured in the study. He and Samantha carried Uncle Bennie’s sickbed and most of his stuff back to the main bedroom. Sissy placed a large flower arrangement on Uncle Bennie’s desk. Feminine touch. Uncle Bennie’s Philips was put away. On a stretch of open bookshelf to the right of the fireplace.
‘Go and seal that machine. It’s for nobody else’s ears,’ Matt says to him in between the funeral arrangements.
He takes a piece of red ribbon, the kind used by flower arrangers, and ties it around the Philips in the way you’d wrap a parcel. He rummages in Uncle Bennie’s drawer and finds what he’s looking for: sealing wax. Over a lighted match he drips raw-red wax onto the knot at the top of the Philips. He stands back: pleased that he could do it so nicely for Matt.
Uncle Bennie’s clothes, all of them, were carte
d back. Samantha said she’d miss the old man. For her and her mother he really was one of the most genuine men they’d ever known. Troy, her mother’s brother, isn’t that bad either, he always comes to mow the tiny lawn in front of their house with the lawnmower that Uncle Bennie himself had given them.
He’s okay and also not quite okay with the family. Sissy especially is nice to him, over-nice, if you ask him. Apart from Uncle Hannes, he doesn’t really know what the family makes of him and Matt. They’re polite, but without being inclusive. For instance, he wouldn’t be able to say to Marko, Sissy’s husband, ag, fuck you Marko, without offending him. There isn’t that kind of closeness.
Next thing, Sissy gets it into her head that he should also be one of the pallbearers, even though the list with the names of the six bearers had already been printed. She just talks without thinking through the suggestion. ‘Let’s face it, they’ll be living together in Pa’s house in any case. Jack is like family.’ So he got up and left them all there with their wine and their stupid discussion: whatever.
For the funeral, Sissy wore the biggest broad-brimmed hat he’d ever seen. Black, with these black lace frills hanging down all around, fascinator-style. She doesn’t actually need sunglasses, but she still wears them. The hat’s brim sticks out so far that Marko can’t sit shoulder-to-shoulder with her in the pew. To their left are Samantha, and Auntie Mary with a green pillbox hat. Auntie Mary has pulled her Zimmer frame in close and is resting one arm on it. Her lace-edged green satin handbag dangles from her other arm.
Matt’s knee bounces up and down, beta blockers and all. When he touches Matt, his arm or shoulder or whatever, he’s like one of those people who’ve cried for days on end and been gutted by it all. Matt said he wasn’t going to cry in church or when the coffin is lowered. He wants to stay strong for his father. In spite of all the shit that Uncle Bennie caused Matt in his life. He was so straight, so straightforward. So set on his principles. On what he thought was right. This and this is how you must live your life. There is only one way. All those things that made Matt’s life hell. And yet, Matt is the one who loved his father most. If you look at Sissy now, or listen to her when she talks, there’s no question about it. Matt was mad about the man. The father and the son. The intimacy between them, almost brutal. Against all odds. Jack finds it a very, very beautiful thing to behold from the outside.
The whole time in church and throughout the sermon from the New Testament – the dominee had chosen the parable of the sower – Jack is moved. He’s only been in a church once or twice in his life. His mother and father (when the bastard was still with them) never put a foot inside a church. ‘I’m a child of Jesus,’ his mother would say. She enjoyed doing her nails in the sun on the stoep on Sundays.
It’s not much of a church inside. Dark wood and face brick. Stark, nothing to look at. And yet, the longer he sits there listening and switching off and listening again, the more he wants to cry. It doesn’t matter that he’s no longer following the dominee. The dominee has a melodious voice without any exaggerated rhythms. And doesn’t pronounce Jesus with a drawn-out ‘e’ sound. (Uncle Bennie used to say it’s a Reformed thing.)
Jack sits there in the midst of all the stuff he’s experiencing and thinking. It’s a comfort. That’s what it feels like to him. He’s right there in the pool of sunlight. Kitsch, okay, but he’s so secure there. It’s not as if he’s going to join this church now, or any other church, for that matter. It’s just that he suddenly feels provided for. Included. Snug in a basket of down. Something like that. He cries, he howls like a dog. It’s enough to make him feel ashamed of himself. Sissy peeks at him from under her massive hat: what’s the matter with him now? Matt even offers his handkerchief to him.
He’s crying about his drug days, about that last sex incident that almost tore him in two. About Okechi the Nigerian who’s squeezing him for payment with that shit voice of his that actually carries a threat, who sure as hell is going to sniff him out at Matt’s house one of these days. He cries about the lovelessness of that house of theirs at 114 Villiers Road, Worcester, that he’s been trying to get out of his mind for who knows how long. About the misery of those days, those nights when he had to go to bed. When? Seven o’clock or nine o’clock or twelve o’clock, makes no difference. Nobody ever told him: go and crawl into bed now, boykie. His mother with her eternal men’s socks, summer and winter. And his sad, narrow bed in that back room with its high window where homing pigeons sat and crapped; to this day, he hates all pigeons. Sometimes it was only him and their cat in that empty house. Those days rise up inside him, everything he doesn’t want to remember. He’s crying about everything. And the recent thing at Zilverbosch. And Matt’s obsession with porn that’s messed him up. He noticed it the other evening when Matt approached him and the two of them tried to get going. He couldn’t even get a fucking hard-on for the man. He cries about that. He cries so hard that he has to drop his head on his knees, and Matt puts a hand on his shoulder.
After the service, he stands to one side under a cypress that smells of resin. He couldn’t wait to inhale smoke deep, deep into his lungs. Matt is fine. He’s not going to cry. He’s come through it all. In honour of his father.
Charnie on Facebook: So how was it?
Jack: Fucked up. Bawled all the time.
Charnie: Ag, sweetie. And the coffin? Will you also be carrying?
Jack: No. Better that way.
Mattheüs has shut the study door on the rest of the house with all its blown-in occupants: Uncle Hannes and Sissy and Marko and the children, fresh from a visit to the Castle, the children’s cheeks inappropriately flushed, as if their oupa hadn’t been buried the day before.
He inspects himself in the mantelpiece mirror: paler, older. Aunt Sannie has arrived with not one, but two of her milk tarts. (Death unites the living, Bennie was like her own brother, ag, even more than that.) If his father had still been here, he’d simply have chased her out. No, he probably wouldn’t have.
Mattheüs walks past her and notices how she’s managed to tie her apron symmetrically behind her bum, and involuntarily experiences a kind of fellow-feeling for the woman. Pa’s attorney will be arriving soon to read the will, and Aunt Sannie is the one who arranges the tea for the occasion, all daintily, with cake forks and the small cocktail serviettes, all of which she manages to find without asking; this could easily have been her own home.
He paces around in the study so restlessly that he can’t hear his own footsteps. His father’s spirit lingers there as nowhere else in the house. For the time being, he won’t move anything. All the books about cars, the ugly German guides to Stuttgart and the Munich Hofbrauhaus, for now he won’t store them or throw them away as he’d intended. Even the Battle of Blood River painting – everything can remain right there to provide his father with a final earthly resting place. This is the only place he’ll be able to sit down with his father for one last time. And if he eventually leaves, he’ll be free. And be able to honour his father in his own way and not as his father wanted him to. Duiker’s Takeaway – if he failed tomorrow, he wouldn’t even have to report this to his father.
He moves the chair away from his father’s desk without making a sound, sits down and picks up his father’s paper knife, holds it under his nose, strokes the handle. The fact is that he still doesn’t know what to make of his father’s permanent absence. Words like wastrel and loafer – in all honesty he can’t remember when last he’d heard his father use them, if indeed he ever did – have become redundant in the totality of memories of him, he doubts if even Aunt Sannie would still dare or wish to use them. He and Jack will just be able to walk in here and kiss each other however and whenever they like. He taps the paper knife on the desk: the liberation he’d so long hoped for hasn’t dawned as he’d imagined it.
He hears the gates slide open outside. That would be the attorney; Sissy must have opened them. Tomorrow mornin
g, early, they’re all driving back to Laingsburg, and the house will belong to him and Jack. He gets up and stands in the centre of the room, on the carpet to the left of the circle of chairs where they’ll all be gathering for the reading of the will; stock-still he stands there, aware of his own breathing as he exhales and inhales, in an attempt to guide himself in his thoughts about his father. It’s the most unexpected phenomenon, slightly shocking to say the least, that he has no desire to shout out: the old dogmatist is dead, from now on you can make and break as you wish. A shaft of sunlight falls through the half-open curtains with hundreds of dust motes in free flight, and he succeeds in recalling his father’s smell within that dusty sunlight, not as he later smelled on his sickbed, but before, with his expensive, sophisticated aftershave complementing the smell of his body.
The attorney, previously Uncle Frans to him, now simply Frans, is in every respect a grey man. Grey suit, grey temples, and a threadbare formality that you expect from lawyers of his age, but don’t want anywhere near you. In actual fact, he doesn’t know him at all. Just that one afternoon when he’d seen his father and the attorney together in a rather intimate situation. It was a fortnight or so after his father first had to go onto heavy doses of morphine; from then on it was only in the mornings, briefly, for a few hours at most, that he was able to give you the opportunity to reach him, their father, Pappie, as Sissy then started calling him. It was during that window period too that she phoned him, in fulfilment of her duty (that’s how she saw it). It must also have been during those lucid periods that he’d made the recordings on the Philips for him. He’d noticed where Jack had put the Philips without actually looking in that direction. Jack was surprised that he hadn’t started listening straight away, out of curiosity. In a year’s time, maybe, he’ll be able to listen to the tapes, when there’s enough distance between him and Benjamin Duiker, just a man, nothing more than a progenitor, in the end. But maybe he’ll leave the red ribbon sealed as is.