Eileen was very vocal in the car and threw herself about in the confined space with frantic good humour when remarking again just how amazing it was that Janet had a twin brother and had told no one and how could she keep such a secret to herself the silly, silly girl. And Janet had smiled with lots of patience and understanding and had asked whether Eileen-the-Understudy really thought so and Eileen-the-Understudy barked with laughter and had said, You mampara, you silly, silly mampara.
They parted on good terms and Janet waited at the front door until Eileen-the-Understudy’s car stuttered to silence next door. It was a while before Eileen-the-Understudy’s car door slammed, and there came the far-off rumble of thunder. It was going to rain. They needed the rain. Janet unlocked the front door and went through to find Alice asleep with her radio arguing softly with itself and Alice’s head in her arms, leaning against the hard wood of the kitchen table. Janet watched her for a brief moment. She leaned close to her and took in the soapy scent, the strange soap that Alice used, and gazed at the wiry strands of her hair that escaped from beneath her covering doek, strands that coiled coarsely and thickly, so different from her own soft brown hair. Janet reached out, perhaps to touch Alice’s hair, but then she was gently shaking Alice’s shoulders and telling her that she, Janet, was home and Alice could go outside now. Thank you, said Janet as Alice took her murmuring, disputatious radio with its Zulu or Xhosa or Sotho or Shangaan or whatever the voices were back to her kaya outside. The children, they being good, were Alice’s last words for the night.
The children! It took a moment for bonnie Jean to remember that she had children. That she was indeed married with children: there was the cautious girl, the eldest, Shelley, followed by little Pieter, the brave boy, and then chaos on two legs, the youngest, the little Sylvia. Was that the right order. Of course it was. Bonnie Jean was banished from her mind and it was just Janet. Married to Hektor-Jan and not to Frank her twin brother from Illyria.
Despite the heat and the thick humidity, Janet treated herself to a deep bath and emerged pink and perspiring. It was very late, and Janet could not bear the rasp of her nightie. So she threw herself onto the bed and lay there naked. Her skin throbbed with the heat of the bath and Janet felt the sweat ooze from her, a film of moisture and it welled in her navel and ran between her legs which she spread wide in an attempt to get cool. But it was impossible.
She got up, but the bedroom windows were already open, and the air did not move a midnight muscle. Janet stood there, and the thunder growled closer. The storm seemed to be skirting the house, circling it somehow. Janet hoped that it would not pass them by. The air needed to break; this stifling heat needed to be split so that the heavens would open and pour down some cooling rain.
And as she thought about the heavens splitting, Janet knew that she would not be able to help herself and before she could grip the edge of the bed, she had opened the back door and was standing once again at the foot of the pool.
The horizon winked with lightning and the thunder lumbered closer, heavy and rough and slouching. What beast was it that was coming to Benoni. The air grew thicker and ever more expectant. Janet stood with her arms stretched wide, her legs apart, trying not to touch herself as it was just too hot, too humid. Such sweltering and sweating – even outdoors. She should never have had that bath. And Janet knew that she was going to have to. She was going to have to step forward. It made sense, as the air bulged so heavily pregnant with the storm. It made sense but oh the horror as she stepped into the baby section of the pool where the water swallowed her ankles with a soft, cool mouth. But she was going to have to descend deeper into the pool or die of heatstroke.
In slow motion, as though the water were black syrup in the midnight air, a pool of deep molasses, Janet waded down one step, then the other, to stand in the shallow end, the beautiful coolness flooding between her legs as well as into her belly button. Bliss. She gasped and all the while she felt with her nervous foot to see if she was anywhere near the crack. She tried to keep to the left-hand side of the pool as she waded deeper and the gorgeous balm of cooling black crept up to her breasts, her shoulders, her neck and chin. And as the proper lightning came, quick and jagged like an electric fracture in the sky, Janet sank beneath the water and never heard the giant, throat-clearing cough of thunder. As she had done as a child, Janet pulled her feet up beneath her and clutched them with her looping arms to form a human ball which gently rotated underwater, buoyed up by the air in her lungs. And as she let the air slowly bubble out of her nostrils, she began to sink – now a human balloon. She could not bear to touch the floor of the pool though and there was the sudden shooting fear that she might put a foot wrong and end up – or down – in the gap in the bottom of the pool. Disappear through the crack to God knows where. Janet uncoiled and threw back her head to the dark air just as the thunder crashed again – crashed as though she had jolted from the water and bashed her head against the pressing sky. Ow, that hurt. Such a big sound and then Janet remembered her mother’s fixation with Highveld thunderstorms. Never shelter under a tree. Janet had to promise never to seek shelter under a tree during a storm. Never stand alone in an open field where the lightning might strike. Janet promised that too. And never ever be anywhere near the pool – that self-same pool – because, Janet, dearest Janet, are you listening, water – conducts – electricity. Electricity is to water what guilt is to marriage, and little Janet had to repeat water – conducts – electricity and to promise – never – to – swim – when – there – is – a – storm and yet here she was a quarter of a century later, a woman stunned by her broken promise that lay shattered at the bottom of the pool like the deep crack.
Janet leapt out of the pool before the dark crack or the blinding lightning or her broken promise could get her. She stood again at the pool’s edge, breathing shakily, a small child filled with shame.
And even as she stood there, bearing in her womb her fourth child, she needed to hold the hand of Lettie, the gentle Lettie whose strong fingers had gripped hers when Janet first learned to walk and whose voice – sometimes sharp, often stern, but always ready to break into gales of laughter – had been the one, telling constant in her growing-up. Her own mother was too busy travelling from the East Rand to Johannesburg, from the old mining town to the big city of gold where the university was, the University of the Witwatersrand. And there Amelia Amis – never Mrs Ward, always Amelia Amis MA Cantab – lectured on the Enlightenment and on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Female Poets and on the novels of William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope and George Eliot. And she would come home late and Janet would have to pit her small strength and ingenuity against a pile of essays for her mother’s attention. Janet took to bouts of tummy ache, sore heads and once a rash of lipstick spots but to no avail whatsoever. Mummy, in Amelia Amis MA mode, would sigh over the top of the neat, stapled pages and perhaps pat her daughter’s head whilst the red pen tick, ticked away or jabbed dismissive comments in the margins. And if Janet kicked up a fuss, perhaps began to sob, then her mother’s eyes would peer over her half-moon spectacles and her hand would be withdrawn and she would sigh her daughter’s name. If Janet persisted, the red pen might make its way behind Amelia Amis MA’s right ear and both hands, unencumbered, would reach down and grip her shoulders, not unkindly, just uncertainly, as though trying to get to grips with a living argument or a sobbing thesis that did not quite make sense and that by holding on to it, she might be able to work out what it was or in which direction it led. But if the tummy ache or the headache made her cry still more loudly or persistently then the hands would turn her away and the sharp, English-accented voice would sound over the top of her head as it summoned Lettie. Lettie, I give up, was the implication. Lettie, this little conundrum is too tricky. Where is its central and lucid structure, its governing argument. Where the coherent analysis. Instead, I have in my hands rather too much raw and wilful emotion. And behold, the salty tears and coursing mucus. And the mess of lipsti
ck smears. Where did she find the lipstick. I never use lipstick.
So old Lettie would appear from nowhere where she had no doubt been waiting in hope and she would receive little Janet once again in her soft, pink-palmed hands that were a burnished and beautiful brown on the other side, just the opposite of Janet’s own hands, so often grubby on the inside and pink on the outside. And Janet would try not to cry as her tummy ache or headache or, that once, her lipstick spots, were soothed by Lettie’s cuddles and soft hands. And Janet would find herself a while later wielding a dustpan and little brush or watching a loaf rise in the oven or helping Lettie to sing a song and little Janet had quite forgotten to bend over her make-pretend tummy ache or to grimace through a phantom migraine.
Where was Lettie now. Janet struggled to remember. Lettie lived on in Alice. She was in the old kaya that adjoined the garage, no doubt fast asleep, not naked before the pool and facing alone the mayhem of the Highveld storm.
As the sky split above her and the heavens opened, Janet was a child once again. With no thoughts of her own children snuggled deep inside the house, Janet ran wildly to Alice’s room. She could not stop her fist from pounding on the metal door with a thunder all of its own. And Alice must have thought it was thunder too as it was a long time – after yet more frantic bashing on the resonant metal – before the handle turned and the door peeled open to reveal her white, startled eyes.
Lettie, Janet cried, I am so sorry. Alice.
And Alice opened the door a fraction more, with a murmured, Madam.
The rain thundered down on the metal roof of the kaya. Janet could barely hear her own voice cry out Alice’s name again. How did Alice ever manage to sleep out here. It sounded like the end of the world. The air fizzed with lightning, tasted of lightning, it was that close, and the crack of thunder was instantaneous. This was the heart of the storm. It was useless to shout. Janet could not shout.
She reached out and took Alice’s hand that clutched the edge of the door. She pulled each of Alice’s fingers loose from the chilly metal and took them in her hand. Alice, she shouted again through the pelting rain, and then she was dragging Alice through the gap, pulling her from her cosy kaya out into the wet-teeming garden.
As she was urgently walking with Alice’s hand, the rest of startled Alice followed in a ghostly nightie, and the rain gushed down cold and hard.
Madam, shouted Alice again but did not pull away her hand. Madam.
Janet led her through the crashing rain. Their hair ran into their eyes, the wet grass clung to their soles, their shoulders stung. Janet could not stop.
Alice’s hand was warm in her own. It was the only warm thing in the world and Janet was not letting go. And then they were standing on the slasto at the pool’s edge and Janet was pointing with her free hand at the leaping surface of the water that splashed like a living salmon and she was shouting out to Alice, The crack, the crack. Alice looked wildly around, as though for the end of the world, and Janet pointed again, The crack, oh God, the crack, as Alice pulled the sodden nightie about herself with her free hand. Then the light bulb of the heavens flashed once before exploding and Janet could scream, There, there, did you see that, and point wildly at the dark fist which had smashed the bottom of the pool. Janet was on her knees, as though dragged down by some vortex, as though beaten down by the rain, and her hand quivered out in front of her, a part of some terrible scarecrow or a divining rod that trembled with the knowledge of the fault, the fissure. And as the night exploded into lightning, and the slick wetness burnished their skin to deep black or brilliant white, it was impossible in the heart of the storm to see who was the Madam and who the maid. They flickered and shone, like lights, like ghosts, soaking wet but on fire.
It took all of Alice’s strength to pull her to her feet, to pull the sobbing little Madam up to her chest and to hold her there as she struggled and fought and tried to turn back to the pool. The rain shrouded them both and the lightning struck again and again, but the storm was wheeling off and it would not be long before the rain softened and the thunder was a murmur from the lips of the sky. And so it came to pass that as she held the Madam, held her so tightly with her wet nightie that it quickly became warm, the rain did indeed sigh to a gentle drizzle and the Madam stopped shaking and fighting and trying to point to the swimming pool.
And like her mother before her, the legendary Lettie, Alice knew precisely what to do. It was not long before Janet was tucked up in bed, her big double bed now, with her feet carefully wiped and freed from the strips of grass that stuck between her toes. And Lettie, no it was Alice, held the glass of warm, sweet Milo to her lips as she sipped, her head secure in a nest of pillows, just how she liked it. Her hair was dry and stroked by Lettie’s pink palms and the soft brush, and the silken sounds of Lettie’s soft voice came singing the lullaby Tula Tu Tula baba Tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni, Tula Tu Tula baba Tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni, Hush my baby close your eyes, Time to fly to paradise, Till the sunlight brings you home, You must dream your dreams alone, Tula Tu Tula baba Tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni, Tula Tu Tula baba Tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni, Hush my baby go to sleep, I’ll be with you counting sheep, Dreams will take you far away, Sleep until the break of the day, Tula Tu Tula baba Tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni, Tula Tu Tula baba Tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni. And Lettie – Alice – held her gently as she burped after draining every last drop of Milo and then she could sink back into slumber as Alice-Lettie switched off the light. Unbidden, in the dreamless dark, her thumb found its way to her mouth.
And then Alice checked on the children who had stood peering from the dark caves of their rooms as Mommy was led past in her birthday suit. Everything was all right. Everything was going to be fine. No more storms. And Mommy would be dressed in the morning and ready to take them to school just like all the other mothers who drove their neat cars and who were all, invariably, indubitably, fully clothed and entirely respectable.
He knew that she would be awake, as was her wont. He would return after the heavenly mayhem to find her, a watchtower, a beacon of wakefulness, waiting for him, to nourish his body and to replenish his soul.
And he wondered with all his might and main, just how he might stand before her, in her father’s house, and answer her truthfully when she turned her head into his neck and whispered, How did it go, my love. Or the even trickier, How are you.
Could he lie. Could he lie directly and blatantly and just say, Fine, all is fine, when everything was anything but fine. Unless you counted the fine attention to detail, the fines imposed on living flesh, the ironic, but you are such a fine fellow, or the paradoxically fine grains of degradation, the opposite of the coarse, the obvious.
And so he could not tell her as a man might tell his wife about all he had done that night when he had sailed forth on his night ships.
He could not describe the briefing of the major. The finger-jabbing, chin-thrusting imparting of the latest security status by the station commander. The very latest on the Swart Gevaar, the Black Danger, which was but one arm in the Total Onslaught against their God-fearing, Christian nationhood. He could not cuddle her and say we are at war with a Communist anti-Christ the likes of which biblical pestilences and plagues are nothing. That they, that beacon of white light on the southern tip of Africa, the land of their covenant with God, their Vaderland and their refuge, was under attack from without and from within. He could not tell her about the arms caches they would discover after his Tuesday night interrogation of those men.
How he, Hektor-Jan, so recently promoted, had already proved his worth. How his great gift to be able to sniff out the truth from a miasma of untruths, evasions and obfuscations had brought such fine success.
He could never tell her how instinctively he went about his work. How he divided his day, his night, into shifts and made sure that he had his tea breaks and stopped when his shift was over so that he might come home on time.
He could not tell her about this man, Mokoene or his boy, his friend, Rapele. And the third member of their little gang, Mujabe. How they were brought into the holding cells already in a bit of a bad way. How he had pretended to be a doctor. All that was needed was a white coat and a stethoscope, so easily borrowed. It was a neat reversal as usually the stethoscope was brought out near the end to check whether they were dead or not, not at the beginning, even before he had begun. And he was so kind. So solicitous. Had they had access to a lawyer – when he knew they would never see a lawyer. And did they feel well, when he was about to make them feel a whole lot worse. Let me look into your eyes. Let me listen to your heart. My goodness me, he said in English so as not to terrify them with his Boer-urgent, Boer-brutal Afrikaans. My goodness me, he said in softer English, how black and wide your pupils seem, how dilated, and he tried not to emphasise the first ominous syllable of dilated, but moved on gently to remark, How your heart is thumping so. How it is going boom-diddy-boom, boom-diddy-boom. That cannot be good. Have you been hurt. Has anyone been unkind. Can I get you a glass of water, a Disprin. Do you have a headache. Maybe a warm mug of tea with lots of sugar. And how they tried to hold on to him, almost not believing their good fortune, almost hoping that not all policemen were dogs, almost not believing that this was some sort of sick joke at their profound expense. And he had gone to get their Disprins and to make them their tea just as the blacks drank their tea – white and sweet. The very opposite of the tired joke in the canteen – Johan/Willem/Sarel/Freddie likes his coffee/tea just as he likes his women – black and strong. And they would laugh again just like they had laughed the last time. And even the men who had been known to take an active interest in some of the black female prisoners, and who, it was known, had actually been willing to help out with the interrogations with parts of their own anatomy, well, they laughed maybe even louder and longer than most.
The Crack Page 13