by Eben Venter
What had made the situation between his father and the attorney intimate – and Mattheüs recalls it now in an attempt to see the grey man as, in some sense, a friend of the father and the family – was that his father allowed the attorney to touch him. Mattheüs was walking past and stopped in the doorway – only one of the double doors was open – and he noticed that his father had lowered his pyjama pants slightly, without this in any way making him guilty of indecency, for in spite of his blindness, his father had always been as set on propriety as other people were on fresh air, and then guided the attorney’s hand to feel the lymphoma lump just above his groin, a touching attempt on his father’s part to share something of his path of suffering with him – his friend and confidant of years’ standing. Here, take a seat, Frans, his father had then said. And this intimate recollection will, he hopes, enable him after all to treat the man with some cordiality.
Soon afterwards, everyone comes in: Uncle Hannes with his pipe and an intimate detachment, if such a thing is possible, probably because of his sharing of the contents of that last love letter to his Parisian lover, and maybe also because of the Beretta, who knows; and then Sissy, trim and well groomed, even and especially in a situation like the funeral of her father, which would have left other people rather pale and drawn; and then Marko, with the striped long-sleeved shirt and jeans with a sharply ironed pleat, his idea of city clothes; and following on their heels, Aunt Sannie carrying the largest tray in their house, with all the tea things, ‘Thank you, but I may as well carry it myself,’ to Marko, who offers to help her.
His phone rings and he goes and stands next to the window. It’s Emile. He wants to know when the takeaway will reopen, his people have to eat, he says with undisguised impatience, which makes Mattheüs realise afresh that he’ll be firing the bugger without any mercy the moment he walks into the shop again.
‘Problems?’ asks Sissy, with her ear for problems.
‘The guy who works for me is so damn cheeky. Little shit.’
His choice of words makes the attorney look up from where he has in the meantime taken the will from the front compartment of his briefcase and placed it squarely on his grey knees, his left hand stuck inside the middle of the file, protective of the private stuff inside. With the wedding ring on his finger and the aged skin of his hand, also grey, it strikes Mattheüs that the man still retains something of that old-fashioned authority that is limited to the male domain and which still intimidates him, even though he can see it for the hollow sham that it is.
Sissy pours. ‘There’s nothing, after all, like a nice cup of tea,’ says Uncle Hannes as he reaches for his; he is served the second cup, after the attorney. And the latter surprises them all by asking if he might rather have a glass of Bennie’s whisky, please, if it’s not too much trouble, without ice, just with an equal amount of water, and Mattheüs – who gets up and looks down at the perfect circle of the man’s bald spot, hairless for so long that it seems like old, tanned leather – experiences the slightest twinge of he doesn’t quite know what, something like an itch in the butt.
‘Anybody else for a drink?’
He places the crystal glass to the left of the attorney’s cup, his poured tea untouched, and notices how the document under the left hand is still perched in exactly the same position on his grey knees, the attorney’s arms protectively encircling The Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Duiker. While he’s about it, he pours himself a stiff one too, and again takes his seat next to the attorney. Sissy has meanwhile sliced the milk tart and served it on the plates, each with a lace serviette, and he has to concede, if there’s a woman who knows her milk tart, it’s Aunt Sannie.
There is anticipation, there is a feeling of excitement, after all; he peeps at Sissy who’s sitting right across from him, quietly tapping her nails against the side of her porcelain cup.
The attorney moves the glass of whisky a fraction to the left, the cup of tea and the plate with milk tart to the right, removes the document from the envelope, and then places the envelope on the space he’s made for it on the coffee table. He takes a sip of whisky, presses his lips together, takes his handkerchief from his pocket and blots his lips with it, opens the document at page one, takes another sip.
@ 9 Poinsettia Road, he Facebooks Charnie. Playing with children, Matt’s sister’s. When last did you play with children? Healing kind of thing to do. I = good space. Really. Believe it or not.
He’s gathered the children on the lawn. The lawn has been mowed, but not so short that the white shows through, and the edges have been trimmed. (He can hear Uncle Bennie on the subject.) Also, the inside of the house looks immaculate, specially for Uncle Bennie’s funeral. Jack doesn’t know how strongly Matt still feels the presence of his father with all his instructions. So the children have to be outside when the will is read: that’s how it’s done. Okay, he’ll play with them. Cute, the three of them. Sort of country kids, innocent, with respect for adults, but also for bugs and birds and things they notice in the garden.
The smallest one hides behind her older sister’s legs. She’s instinctively wary of his shaven head, of a man with a different vibe to her father. He swings the two eldest around, first the one and then the other, by gripping their hands in his and then spinning them around so that the momentum of his body whirls them upwards and makes them fly horizontally over the lawn. Shrill little-girl screams. The little one is still holding back. Jumps up and down as she spontaneously shares in the flying delight of her sisters. No, not yet, she first wants to watch.
He digs a Coke can out of the rubbish bin and fills it with pebbles and teaches them to play I Spy. Chucks the tin way over on the other side of the lawn, so that the plovers scatter noisily. Their time to hide is as long as it takes him to fetch the tin. Shrieks trail behind them as they scramble for hiding places in their oupa’s garden, which is not unfamiliar to them. He leaves the little one in her hiding place as she splutters with the tension. If he drags her out now, she’ll definitely yell her head off. Funny timid little kid.
But their enthusiasm gives him more stamina. A loaded word, enthusiasm. He’s explained it in class. From the Greek: possession by a god.
When, after the sixth turn, he collapses out of breath on the fanned steps, the little one shuffles closer and gingerly touches his shaven head: ‘Does Uncle really not like hair?’
He can’t tell when last he’s felt so secure. First in church and now at this house and in this garden behind its walls. He and Matt. Here. He looks up when he hears something and points it out to the children. In the wind-swept blue sky above them, an aeroplane is writing the words Happy Birthday Danny in white smoke against the heavens.
Aunt Sannie comes out with a wedge of milk tart for each of them. When all four of them have taken theirs and sat down on the slate-paved stoep, Jack experiences the homeliness again.
Almost corny, he facebooks again.
Charnie: Enjoy it my friend. It’s yours.
This is what it must have been like all those years for Matt and his sister, no matter how much grief there was in their family. Who didn’t have their share? The house behind them, stylish and very beautiful, but above all a place, a kind of castle they could enter and feel safe in. Very. And this is where the two of them must also have sat, just as they’re doing now, and then Matt’s mother probably brought them cool drinks and cookies. And nobody could take it away from them. Maybe the cool drinks and cookies, but not their untouchableness here inside these walls with a mother and a father, and the rest of the world on the other side and who cares. Maybe here with Matt he’ll be able to make a home for the first time in his life. Maybe he and Matt can be a family, just the two of them, but still a family, with a house and a garden. A security you can believe in. Every night you come back to it, milk and bread and food and things in the cupboards, beds with cool sheets or cosy flannel sheets in winter. Beds for ever! Always there,
each one sturdy on its legs in its room with a door you can close behind you.
Matt is sitting in there now with his family, listening to the will that he claims he already knows. (The little one has now come to sit between his legs with her milk-tart hands: ‘Uncle doesn’t smell like my daddy.’) He and Matt can sort things out in the safe haven of the house. Massive. He can’t describe it in any other way. The privilege of becoming a permanent resident in such a house. He’s going to grab hold of it with a passion, with everything he’s got. Sitting here with the little one’s blonde hair right under his nose, specially washed for her oupa’s funeral with Sunsilk or whatever shampoo they use on the farm, he’s not even bothered about his and Matt’s pathetic sex life.
He hasn’t even said it to Matt and maybe he never will. The guy’s had a kind of furtiveness about him ever since he started with the never-ending porn thing. He knows it, he can see it now. Images and stuff, he doesn’t know how hard-core the shit is he’s been watching, but let’s face it, it’s completely changed him. He’s not stupid. It’s as if everything Matt does now and wants to do or is going to do leaves a kind of shadow trail. When he gets up in the morning and showers and prepares for work, Matt he means, he first has to open his computer and quickly check some site or other that’s refreshed daily or even hourly. His pre-work breakfast. At first he was embarrassed with him in the room, but now Matt does it without batting an eye. That’s how he’s changed since he moved in. Matt also frowns more often. His takeaway is taking it out of him. He doesn’t know how Uncle Bennie’s death will still affect him. Maybe not at all.
And yet he loves him so much, that guy who is at this moment sitting there listening to his father’s will in his father’s study that he’s prepared specially for the reading, the long curtains half-drawn to give the room a dimness. As he likes it. He loves the way he does things, everything in his special Matt way. Thoroughly, and with a sharpened pencil, not unlike Uncle Bennie. Even when Matt touches him, it’s hard and all-embracing. So it’s inevitable, he supposes, that he’ll be thorough with his porn thing too. Burning to begin with, inextinguishable to the end. Let him get through it his way. And Matt will, for sure. There’s no other way for him.
The children want him to play another kind of game. Wilder, faster. The little one the ringleader now. They make a circle around him and egg him on. Lovely, the children.
He makes them throw the Coke can now, and runs off to the back to the outside room where the mower and spanners and stuff are kept. In the darkness thick with oil fumes, his thoughts keep running. He’s so glad he loves a man. Everything about Matt attracts him, and he’s not only talking about his butt and the package in his Calvin Kleins. If he looks at Sissy or Charnie or some of the female staff at Zilverbosch – he simply doesn’t know what it takes for a man to fall in love with women like that. He hasn’t got it. And it’s utterly okay with him.
‘Where’s Oom,’ the little girls shout from way over on the other side of the house. He doesn’t come out. Five, six minutes pass. And he starts his own game that he’ll draw out until they can hardly take it any longer, he’ll push them to the edge of little-girl hysteria. He goes round to the other side of the house, the south side where the people are sitting listening to the will, walks along the path of river stones leading to the lemon tree, hunches his back and slowly circles the tree. When they notice him, like that, they all scream, weak and barely able to breathe with the tension of it all. The game has switched: now he’s going to catch them, they can sense it, they’re afraid of him, and it’s totally for real.
He can’t remember when last he was so happy, he again thinks to himself. Even as far as the milk tart he can still taste in his mouth; it all completes the picture. A house with a pantry full of boxes of biscuits and Weet-Bix and jam, and cupboards full of linen and stuff, thick walls that will still be standing long after everyone is dead, full curtains to make everyone inside feel comfortable, nice and cool or nice and warm or nice and dim, and flowers and things that you smell when you open the big sash windows. And that’s where he and his man are going to live. Believe it or not. Like people who respect their living space. And who inspire respect, he means, because if you arrive here at number nine Poinsettia Road, you know you’ve arrived. His breath comes fast and warm: he can’t wait for it all to begin.
‘I just want to mention beforehand,’ says Pa’s attorney, with his eyes on the open document encircled by his hands, ‘I want to say the following in preparation. A will like that of your father, and brother, is carefully considered. Everyone must bear this in mind.’ (The man’s eyes still piously downcast.) ‘And it’s important to bear in mind that a will seldom turns out as expected by the heirs.’ Now he looks up with a gaze intended to be benign. He looks first at Uncle Hannes, then at Sissy, and finally at Mattheüs. (How transparent the man is, without having the vaguest inkling of the fact.)
‘Well, on that note I’ll get going:
I the undersigned, Benjamin Duiker, ID number such and such, at present resident at (yes okay), hereby rescind all previous wills, codicils (get to the point), and nominate Maria Anna de Witt, born Duiker, Mattheüs Duiker, Susan Helmien Strydom (what’s Aunt Sannie’s name doing there?) and the Reformed Church, Gardens, as the only heirs of my estate, movable as well as immovable goods, nothing excluded.
The residence at number nine Poinsettia Road, Rondebosch, shall be put on the market as soon as is practicable, and after costs have been deducted the proceeds will be evenly divided between Maria Anna de Witt, born Duiker, Susan Helmien Strydom on behalf of the Silver Cloud Christian Fellowship, and the Reformed Church, Gardens.’
Sissy makes big eyes at him, then looks at Marko, and then he sees her pull her finger from the ear of her teacup and point at the door, in the direction of the passage, towards his bedroom where there’s no Jack right now – he’s in the garden with her children – at his bed, at Jack in his bed, at him and Jack on that messy, rumpled bed. Now she lightly waves her index finger from side to side, and Marko, with his stupid forehead and the stupid line that the sweatband of his felt hat leaves on it, nods his head in full comprehension, oh that, now he understands. You’d have to be a dumbfucking idiot not to know exactly what message Sissy is sending to Marko. And he, he’s sinking, his whole body’s sinking, and his hands in front of him on his knees, on his crotch, limply by the sides of the chair and back again on his crotch, his hands turn to blocks of bloodless marble.
For a moment, the shallow grey eyes of Pa’s attorney rest on him before he carries on reading: ‘The full contents of the house will with due discretion be divided between Maria Anna de Witt, born Duiker, and Mattheüs Duiker.
‘The Mercedes E-class is bequeathed to Mattheüs Duiker.’
(Sissy’s eyes still on him.)
‘Stop fucking staring at me!’ Mattheüs jumps up and in one movement sweeps his whisky glass from the table so that it shatters on the antique tiles of the fireplace. Uncle Hannes splutters in pure discomfort.
‘This has been cooked up. It can’t be the truth. Pa wouldn’t do it to me. I looked after him to the end. Not you. Not one of you!’
Sissy, also white as a sheet, jumps up, ‘Mattie,’ she nips around the back of her chair to fetch him, to hold him, but he pushes her aside and runs from the dining room, Aunt Sannie, clutching a dishcloth to her mouth, standing at the kitchen door, ‘Yes, you hypocrite, Silver Cloud, my arse,’ calls out to Jack while fleeing through the front door – Jack with the children way over there by the lemon tree – puts up two plovers that screech in terror, and sinks to his haunches, wishes he could cry about what’s happening to him here, and all he can think of, all he’s filled with, is how long it took him to love his father, how long, a lifetime he worked at it, the bitter nightmares and the sudden flare-ups when things went badly wrong between him and his father, he was eventually able to list each one of the occasions that were the original trigger
s for his hatred of his father, the sudden surge of nausea while sitting on the toilet or lying on Clifton beach; and how long hasn’t it taken him to process it all and to see eventually that this is a man acting in good faith, his own father who wants nothing but the best (from the perspective of his set of values) for him. Towards the end, long before that, for years in actual fact, he’d felt compassion for his father, with all his whims and things, his mood swings, all his loves; it was no longer a matter of trying, he really did feel empathy for his father. When he’d started seeing more and more of Jack, there was a flaring up of objections that no longer affected him as they earlier had; he just wrote him off as the old man with drooping balls, a deliberately disparaging image to defuse his father’s objections, that’s how he’d thought of all his rubbishy old stuff that petered out towards the end and then stopped altogether. He’d believed that his father’s change of heart had resulted from respect for him and respect for him and Jack (not a bad chappie, Pa called him), and he was always so very warm-hearted and polite to Jack. And in that last year or so he was constantly at his father’s side – the devotion of a believer. He became familiar with his thighs, his arms, his buttocks, his cheeks, his dead eyes, every nook and cranny of his father’s body, wipe and massage – it might just as well have been his own.
With his fingernail, he scratches a bit of moss off the slate path, gets up to go back and hear out the will, and persuades himself that this is not the latest, the last version, of the will of Benjamin Duiker, it’s impossible; and realises as he walks into the entrance hall and smells their house, a blend of floor wax and wilting proteas and kelim dust and the Duikers, their characteristic smell, that it’s nonsense what he’s thinking right now. And: how would he manage it? This house is the only one that he knows intimately, he’s never in all his thirty-two years had his own place, how on God’s earth will he ever begin to hate such a house as a precondition to getting out of there, how will he ever banish from his consciousness this house with its history.