And then Hektor-Jan appeared and they were all together again, one big happy family.
Welkom terug, boomed Hektor-Jan. And he beamed and freed his neck from the bursting top button and whipped off his tie.
Alice bobbed a curtsey – tried to bob a curtsey with her cargo of Shelley, Pieter and Sylvia and said, Dankie, Baas, thank you, Master, with a smile.
How was Zululand, Hektor-Jan switched to English.
Janet beamed and it did not matter where her somewhat peripatetic script was now, or that there was a crack. With Alice back, things immediately looked much better. It was just so nice being all together once again. It was not the same without Alice. Just look at the children. Sylvia still squeaking, Shelley laughing as Alice tried to tell Hektor-Jan about the wedding feast in Zululand, about the ridiculous lobola, the dowry charged in cows for Alice’s cousin, and there was little Pieter, believe it or not, with tears in his eyes and just clinging to Alice’s apron. Janet breathed in deeply and smiled and smiled.
Everything would be fine. Absolutely fine. Janet could feel it in her bones.
But later that afternoon, she had the strangest conversation with Douglas van Deventer.
Hektor-Jan was asleep, in a single day trying to readjust to normal routines – and not succeeding. Alice had caught up on the dishes and was now tidying her own room, the kaya. The children were in the pool – where else – and had mercifully given no sign of noticing the crack. Janet need not have been surprised. She knew too well how unobservant, how casually – if not how wilfully – obtuse children could be. Sometimes she wished that she could be like them. So hermetically sealed inside their silver skins that bounced back the sun and turned golden brown with no trouble at all. To be so inviolable, to be so fine! So rude of health and so aggressively well! She distracted herself by wandering right across the garden, inspecting every plant and patch of grass, making mental notes for Solomon, who was due back tomorrow. Dear God, please let him be back on time. Janet did not think she could face another setback to the fragile balance of her blessed routine. And then, once the restless lawn was mown, cut down to size and the bushes trimmed and the edges of the flower beds seen to, then she could show Solomon the crack and see what he thought. Thank goodness Hektor-Jan had not been near the pool. And, for once, the children had not said a thing, had not blurted out to the world the stark and brutal fact that there was a crack at the bottom of the pool and that before long the water would leak out. They did not shout out that their mother simply could not keep topping up and adjusting the watery betrayal of their very own pool.
Janet was close to tears at the edge of the garden when Doug’s head rose into view. He seemed to emerge from the leaves themselves. Doug the dog now Doug the dryad. He glanced down as though amazed that she stood there, apparently straight from the froth of the pool where Sharky rang out and there were terrible shrieks of fun.
The kids are having a great time as usual. His opening gambit played safe: kids, great time, all as per usual – the familiar and the familial.
Janet made some reply, equally innocuous no doubt.
Noreen said that your Alice is back.
Doug had the tender temerity to mention his wife, even as his eyes slid along Janet’s body and came to rest on her left breast, no, her right, no, in the middle of her generous cleavage that ran like a fleshy valley down the centre of her bronzed chest.
Janet blushed and clasped her hands in front of her. Doug, Doug, Doug.
Yes, she said, Alice is back. Thank goodness, she is back.
You must be pleased, Doug smiled. He shifted a branch that rose up to his chin. His voice seemed to be filtered by the rhododendrons, a feat of vegetative ventriloquism. Janet smiled.
Oh yes, she said.
The children must be glad, Doug dwelt on such gladness. The children must be glad.
Janet nodded.
And Higher must be glad too. He must be really glad.
The children are delighted, said Janet and then she paused. Of course Hektor-Jan was glad. Why would he not be glad. He was as glad as the rest of them. They all loved Alice; she was part of the family.
Because you all love your Alice, she is part of your family, said Doug and Janet had the disconcerting sense that Doug was speaking inside her head. Or, at the very least, he was somehow articulating her thoughts. Her own thoughts were speaking in a soft manly way from the depths of the rhododendrons.
We all love Alice, said Janet to reassure herself. Yes, it was her own voice coming from her own mouth.
Of course, Doug nodded and the rhododendrons danced merrily in their leafy tangles. You, Shelley-Pieter-Sylvia and Higher, you all love Alice to bits.
Janet smiled up at Doug and her arms pulled more tightly around her.
It is important to love one’s maid, Doug was like a dog with a bone, or an insistent crack at the bottom of a pool. He did not seem to know when to stop. The happiness of the home depends on the love of a maid. Depends on just how she is taken to the heart of the children, and the wife and the husband. I bet you found yourselves missing her over Christmas. I bet you even spoke about her on the day itself, wondering what she was doing, wondering if she was going to be having turkey too.
Janet stared up at the fluttering leaves as Doug spoke with his hands. Sometimes he uttered such nonsense. And there was no Noreen here. There was no Noreen to haul the conversation back onto safe and familiar cracks – or rather, tracks. No. Doug was roaming free in the conversational sense. Perhaps he had been drinking – yet more 5th Avenue Cold Duck. Janet, down below, could not smell anything and he seemed steady enough. He did not look as though he would fall out of the rhododendrons and splash in a brown tangle of thin man’s limbs at her feet. She seemed safe enough.
Yes, we missed her. Have you had any luck on your part with a new maid.
Doug stared down at her for a long while and Janet found herself seriously wondering whether or not she had in fact uttered a word. She repeated the friendly query, her voice cheerful and bright and she moved her hands to behind her back: far more confident and assertive that way.
Doug suddenly smiled, his eyes again full of her chest, and shook his head. No such luck, he said. No, we have not been lucky in the maid department. Unlike you and Higher. Higher has been very lucky as far as maids are concerned, has he not. Very lucky indeed.
Janet watched Doug’s mouth. The way his lips pursed pinkly and the words popped into her head. Words loaded with freight. Words carrying thoughts of Alice and their family. Of a happy Hektor-Jan. And she stared at the beaming Doug whose lips were so pink and oddly moist, almost waxen like camellias and not the spittle-spray of rhododendron flowers at all. Janet began to wonder desperately where Noreen could be, that surely she could not again be poleaxed on her bed with a meat-cleaver migraine. Then she flinched at the violent thoughts – why axes and cleavers. How disconcerting and how pink and wet was Doug’s mouth that even now was wrinkled with yet more words that her mind was desperately trying to avoid, like an umbrella fending off sprinkles of sharp knives.
But there is more to life than Alice, surely, Doug seemed to be saying. Something more about Alice. Alice, Alice, Alice. A town like Alice, he seemed ready to shoot off his mouth, or to carol or yodel on about Alice in wonderland. But then he glanced behind him, back into the rhododendrons as though he had seen a snake or sensed a voice that had come from the green flames of the leaves.
Gotta go, he turned to her even as he slid down the ladder, his shoulders, neck and head descending behind the grey curtain of solid concrete and then all that was left was the blank wall, the shrieking of her children and a nagging sense of something on the edge of thought. After a long while, Janet continued her circumnavigation of the garden. She somehow managed to retrieve the list of things for Solomon to do from the depths of her mind even as she wondered what made Doug clamber up the wall to say such things. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. Her head hu
rt and the rhododendrons on the other side of the wall seemed to taunt her with their dark-green vigour.
But everything settled down that evening. Hektor-Jan woke up after a short sleep and they had an early supper cooked by Alice. Toad in the hole with a large side plate of salad each. And custard and tinned pears to follow. They sat in state at the dining-room table. The children were well behaved, no one mentioned the crack and the talk centred on going back to school.
Standard One, Janet said to Pieter, I can’t believe you’ll be in Standard One already.
Pieter tried to fit half a sausage in his mouth at once. He nodded with the weight of the world on his small shoulders.
Standard One, he muttered to himself in the same tones that he had heard the Oh Peck Oil Cry Sis mentioned and the Shark of Iran. Or the plight of the Aye Zhins under Eddy Amen, which had been much discussed at the dinner table a while back. Let them just try that here with the whites, his Pappie had said darkly, and Pieter had tried to frown and to scowl in the same dark way. Just let the baddy called Eddy try to mess with his Pappie then it would be Amen for him indeed. And he pictured dark figures lurking at the bottom of the front garden, trying to get them, but afraid to come any closer because Pieter’s Pappie had a gun and was a policeman. But more serious was the approach of Standard One – yet another year of school after the long age of Grade One and Grade Two. His world of summer holidays was falling apart, but Pieter could intone the deep seriousness of his advancing years in the direction of his younger sister who still frolicked with such innocence in nursery school. Standard One. I, your older brother, am about to face the total onslaught not of Grade One, not even Grade Two, you hear, but Standard One. Trump that, you little squirt.
Pieter has a bogey in his nose. Sylvia knew how to strike back, how to haul Pieter Pieter the Pumpkin-eater back into the nursery. I can see it. It’s right there sticking out his nose. It’s green. Sis, man, and she made a gagging sound, garnished with salad giggles, as she taunted him with her mouth full.
Sylvia.
Both Janet and Hektor-Jan fired the warning shot at the same time.
Standard One, Pieter repeated darkly making an international incident out of the three syllables.
Bogey, mouthed Sylvia. Bogey, bogey, bogey.
When do we get our new uniforms? said Shelley.
We go shopping tomorrow, said Janet. Once I have shown Solomon what to do, we shall go shopping.
Do we have to? Pieter continued to send the ballistic missile of his stare right into his younger sister’s face. Do we have to? It’s our last day of holidays. He tried not to grin as Sylvia’s face was obliterated by a double mushroom-cloud. That would teach her, her and her stupid bogeys.
Absent-mindedly, Janet stroked Sylvia’s cheek through the thermonuclear flames. She did not even flinch.
Do we have to? Pieter repeated more urgently.
Pieter, she said. Pieter, you know the answer, and Alice smiled as she cleared the plates and the side plates.
The smooth custard and floating pears appeared before them. Janet nodded her thanks to Alice. So nice to have Alice back. What had she done without her. How had she coped without her. And Janet knew the answer.
Listen to your ma, Hektor-Jan’s voice offered manly support and certainty. New uniforms tomorrow and ready for school the next day. Got that.
All three children nodded vigorously, even Sylvia who did not need a uniform and who was not going to get one.
The pears disappeared in bite-sized segments and the evening was scraped to a close with the last smears of the custard.
It’s nice to have Alice back, said Shelley voicing every thought as they stared up at Alice and beamed as she cleared away their plates.
Shelley’s Secret Journal
Word for the day from Granny’s list is INVOLUNTARY.
I wish kerk was not involuntary. It is long and Dominee thinks he is indubitable. He makes me feel very violable. Your plan is working Granny. I like your words. I am also glad that Alice is back and Mommy can calm down. I am very glad that we are finally going to get new school uniforms that fit us properly. Pieter is being silly again. I have told him to mind his own business and not to go creeping about in Mommy and Pappie’s room or in Alice’s kaya. Alice held me involuntary when I said good night. She said she had to hold me because she won’t see her own little daughter in Zululand until Easter. I have not seen you this year Granny. I will try to show you our secret journal when we visit. I shall remember to wink three times with my left eye and I will hold you and kiss you even if you have been at the tissues. Love, Shelley.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
It was no joke, that valley of the shadow of death. To become a God-fearing man, just try putting the fear of God into men. Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. With the rod and the staff – just try getting good, reliable staff – and the flex of the electric cord and perhaps a machete, but definitely a pistol, how easy it was to comfort the confessions from his flock. No flogging the flock. No fucking the flock. Just a table prepared. Things to anoint the human body until the tears and the bladder and the bowels runneth over and the confession was spilled. Then there could be goodness and mercy. And then they could all emerge from the valley of the shadow of death and not become death, the destroyer of worlds and fragile skulls, whole universes of individual thought and perception and experience. Even in terror, there was such individuality. Such a unique response to his ministrations. Never mind fingerprints: the response to pain was unique, characteristic and telling. There was no knowing just when the cup would runneth over, and how. But with such shepherds, runneth over it would. He could not lie down in green pastures as he had slept that afternoon. And he needed to remain awake well into the night so that he could sleep during the following day and be ready for night shift. Be ready, and perhaps as well rested as that valley with its distinctive shadow which beckoned like a lover. Dark and comely, soft and exciting. He would descend with pleasure into that valley – how oddly sexual. Wait, I am coming, he wanted to call out. But he was silent in the dark house as his family slept. He made not a sound as he sat with the Bible, his Louis L’Amours and his James Micheners in the dark, his lips moving silently as he recited the psalms. In his palms, he held the human molar as though he were praying at its miniature ivory altar which perched in four-legged steadiness on his clean skin. Big things were going happen. That had been the final briefing for the week, and the one to set the tone for the new year. Yes, things were on the move. They would have to stand firm when the time came because it would come. As night follows day, so the night, which they knew was coming, would certainly follow the day. The blacks of night were coming for the whites of day. The psalms spilled from his lips in counterpoint to the molar that his hands held so tightly. If he held that tooth any more fiercely, there would be blood. Of that, he was certain. It would bite into the muscle and sinew of his hands and so wreak its revenge. In many ways, he longed for the clarity and purpose of blood, the bright point of pain that might lock his desperate thoughts into the here and now. He gripped the tooth even more loudly and whispered his psalms even more tightly: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear –
6.4cm
The game soon got out of hand. Everyone
cut themselves, on the thigh and shoulder, but mostly on the forearm, and after a while everyone was covered in blood. Suddenly the men noticed that I was sitting quietly in a corner and they fell upon me. I protested for all I was worth, but finally agreed to cut myself. The men stood aside and watched as I took out my pocketknife, pushed the point into my left arm and cut.
The cut wasn’t deep enough to their liking. I was held down and two gaping wounds were slashed into my left arm. At first there was no blood, but then it started gushing. The prolonged drinking had thinned my blood, and I was afraid I might bleed to death.
Our bloodthirst having been triggered, we went to the adjacent bar, where we started a fight and very nearly demolished the place.
– Johan Marais, Time Bomb: A Policeman’s True Story
Sowetan Heimweh
She calls to me
with her broken mouth.
My name she lisps
through bloody lips,
each syllable a shattered tooth.
Why is my name so long?
– Gabriel Tshabalala
Alice was back and now Solomon was back. Janet could feel more complete than she had felt for most of December and early January. She was up and dressed and ready well before Hektor-Jan would arise and even before Alice came in to do the tea.
The sky was blue and bright, the grass fresh and green with promise. The air was yellow in the soft sunshine – oh, it promised to be a good day. Not too hot. Just right. Like Goldilocks and the three bears.
Janet wanted to fling open all the windows of the house and shout out with joy, Be gone, you crack. Go away, we do not want to play today!
The Crack Page 10