The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  Tell me about your busy day, he said.

  The spaghetti was too long to coil around the fork. He brought it to his mouth, inserted it and sucked hard.

  Janet spoke.

  A spaghetto came slurping up from his plate to be chewed, swallowed, digested.

  She told him about the children. She told him about Pieter’s progress with the eight-times table. What Sylvia’s teacher had said about her aptitude with clay. How Shelley was becoming even more quiet and studious and that, dear God, her penetrating questions reminded Janet of her mother. Did Hektor-Jan remember what her mother was like before the, you know, the Alzheimer’s.

  Hektor-Jan chewed. He chewed on the blasphemy which heralded the reference to penetrating questions. He chewed on the fact that, surely, she knew that he tolerated most things in this broken world, but not blasphemy. And did she find his questions penetrating. What did this Englishwoman really think and feel. He chewed. Could he swallow. He chewed as her mouth moved. There was not a word about the garden boy. Not a whisper about the garden boy fell from her lips. She stopped talking. He stopped chewing. The clock in the kitchen was very loud. Its jerking hand tolled the seconds.

  What time on Saturday, Janet said. Her voice jumped at him and he swallowed in surprise. Who would have thought that a single spaghetto could make you choke.

  She handed him a glass of water.

  He gulped it.

  He looked at his plate. Was she changing the topic. He looked at the runes, the twisted hieroglyphs on his plate. She had not told him about her day. Tell me about your day, he said.

  Yet again the itchy ear lobe. Again the hunted look. The brittle smile. Then the hand reached out to touch his arm that held the heavy fork. She did not need to utter a word. His heart thumped as loudly as the fokken clock. His skin tightened and went cold. His world of work seemed to be pouring into the little kitchen.

  She spoke.

  Then she stopped.

  What did you say, she said. What did you say, darling.

  Had he spoken. If he had, what had he said.

  Who is Delilah, she said. Did you say Delilah.

  Delilah, he repeated. Had he said Delilah. And he knew that he had. The great Samson, in the height of his power, had been cut down by the treachery of his Delilah. Even her name carried the coil of a lie. And his wife. Did this daughter of an English university lecturer and a soft rooinek, an Engelsman, embody a net. Janet. Delilah.

  Net, said Janet. What do you mean, net.

  He knew that he shook his head and said, no. Nee. Geen kans nie, not a chance. As ek ’n vraag vra – if I ask a question – do not you dare ask a question.

  And the spaghetti that were his intestines tightened and he felt the kitchen slide to Benoni Central, to the holding cells. He clung to the ticking of the kitchen clock. Father, husband, father, husband, ticked the clock. His hands ached against the hard fork; he dared not close his eyes. He dared not raise the fork to her face.

  Her hand moved on his arm. It was painfully tender. Jezebel.

  A bath, she said. But you have hardly touched –

  She would run a deep bath. Lots of foamy bubble bath. The way he liked it.

  Of course, she said. I’ll run it and get you a fresh towel, nice and crisp. Maybe you are coming down with something. And let me see that poor hand.

  She helped to undress him, took the clothes from him.

  Like John the Baptist, she helped him to sink into the deep water.

  She arranged his arm along the side of the bath on a hand towel so that her neat bandaging did not get wet. Keep it dry, she said. Otherwise it will take much longer to heal. Is that better.

  His desk job was more dangerous than she had suspected.

  And he lay there in the water.

  What time on Saturday, she persisted. You said that you had organised a present for Pieter. You know how much he wants a bike, a Chopper. Did you have a Chopper in mind. It’s either that or another dog. He desperately wants a dog, a Jock, too.

  Maybe if he slipped beneath the surface of the water all would be quiet. He would not hear her. The black garden boy would be washed away by the white bubbles. He eased himself down so that just his ears were underwater. The world became a murmur.

  He cursed Doug and his brandewijn. He cursed his stinging hand and the lying bastards at Benoni Central. He did not know how to curse his wife and the garden boy.

  It had come to this.

  He had thought that he could keep the world of work separate from his life at home. His private Apartheid. He had prayed that he could keep both worlds running along the lines of separate development. How he had prayed.

  He was cast out into a wilderness of white bubbles. Beneath the water, it was quiet. But, like the kitchen clock, he heard the warp and woof of his heart. It was thumping.

  It had come to this.

  ‌25.6cm

  Alexandra,

  What are teeth, but the off-shoots of a skull?

  What is a smile, but the airing of enamelled tombstones?

  And when that blackness splits, why is there such a rictus

  Of white, white, white?

  – Refilwe Ralapele, from ‘Anatomising Alexandra’

  One day a woman returning from taking her children to school was ambushed on the Sonnestraal road by a group of angry residents from nearby Duduza hiding in the tall grass on either side of the road. They threw stones at the car, she lost control and the vehicle overturned. The woman, a nurse, was stoned to death inside her car. Our base was about four kilometres from where the incident had taken place but we could do nothing to prevent it. When we arrived at the scene, we found the dark blue Volkswagen Passat lying on its roof. The woman lay halfway out of the window, her blonde hair on the dark surface of the tarred road.

  – Johan Marais, Time Bomb: A Policeman’s True Story

  ‌

  Janet brushed her teeth again. She stood beside her naked husband and whilst he brushed his teeth, she brushed her teeth. She continued long after he had sunk naked into bed. She choked on the sterilising foam and coughed it up. She spat hard. Kept spitting and rinsing for a long time.

  There were no snores when she dressed and crept out of the bedroom. Hektor-Jan lay rigidly asleep.

  She knew that he was watching her as she dressed. She did not know what had happened at work, why he should be so upset about his skinned hand and why he did not seem able to bear her touch. He was a very impatient patient.

  She dressed slowly, and as quietly as she could whilst his eyes glared in the curtained dark. She chose the dress that was his favourite, the one that he loved to unzip and let fall to the ground. Such a simple dress, except for the never-ending zip at the back. She would need a hand. Usually she asked him, but he was pretending to be asleep. She would ask Alice. Or one of the children. She left the room with her back exposed.

  Janet shut the door on the screaming silence.

  Solomon arrived.

  Alice made breakfast.

  Pieter hovered behind Alice. His face looked blotched and messy – and he seemed about to suck his thumb. Before she could say anything, Alice turned and pressed his hand away from his face. Alice bent over him and said something softly. Pieter brightened. It had something to do with his birthday.

  Janet took the children to school and negotiated all of Pieter’s attempts to bribe the answer to his birthday present out of her. He offered her twenty cents and three soft Chappies, his favourite bubblegum. He promised to be good. He recited his eight-times table, all fine except for nine and twelve times eight. He said if he got a dog he would pick up the poo. If it was a Chopper, he would go shopping for her. He had to know. He would die if he did not know. She smiled at him in the rear-view mirror. He was such an ardent little chap.

  She made the children wait even longer as she hugged them hard and kissed them and then hugged them again.

  Let go, Pieter struggled, annoyed that he had another day and night to wait for his birthday. Sh
elley and Sylvia stood like dolls. Woodenly, they accepted her urgent attention. They were like the dolls she used to have, the much older Shelley and Sylvia hidden from her mother’s derision and even from her husband. They were at the bottom of the wardrobe, where she kept her things. She had not played with them for ages. She had not introduced Shelley to Shelley, or Sylvia to Sylvia. She looked in wonder at their fresh skin and kissed their soft mouths again. One more hug, she pleaded, but they were gone. Pieter ran. Shelley also ran, but then turned back once in concern.

  After the short drive to the nursery school, Sylvia skipped singing beside her. Then, she too was gone and Janet knew that she had to return home and that after all that, she would have to make her way to the bottom of the garden to peer at the swimming pool. She held the steering wheel hard.

  She did not hear the backfiring.

  She was home.

  The cement would have dried. The crack would be closed. Solomon would be painting the bottom of the pool with the white paint. All would be well.

  But Janet knew that it was not so.

  Before Nesbitt began his yelping and before Desperate Doug could appear and hiss to her, she knew.

  She left the car door open and her fingers flustered the front-door keys. She ran through the house, straight past Lettie and out the kitchen door. She dived across the sea of green grass towards Solomon whose bottom half had been swallowed by the empty pool. He was standing in the shallow end.

  He did not look up as she arrived breathlessly. He could have been a solitary black-jack in the white flesh of the pool. He could have been a living crack, so dark against the gleaming basin of the pool. Janet had to prevent herself from falling in.

  The crack was back. It was more than a foot wide and it ran down the entire length of the pool and all the way up the sides as well. It was worse than ever. After all that work! They might as well not have bothered at all. It had made no difference. If anything, it might have made it worse. How could that be. But it was. Indubitably. One of her mother’s favourite words peeled off the past and surfaced. Janet found her lips moving. Indubitably. The deep syllables welling up and spilling. The crack re-emerging from who knows where. Indubitably.

  Solomon, she said.

  He did not look up. He seemed transfixed by the crack. Just as she was. She was losing him to the crack.

  Solomon, she said again.

  He shook his head.

  Eish, he said. Madam, eish. All the work, Madam. All the money. The mixing – too much hard work.

  His final eish was a sigh.

  Janet took a deep breath. We cannot give up, she said. We must – persist. Persistence, and she listened to her mouth in wonder as it spoke another of her mother’s sharp words. Amelia Amis, a vicar’s daughter from the depths of rural Hampshire, from Long Sutton, South Warnborough and a place called Well, had made her way up to Cambridge through sheer persistence. Newnham College for women. Persistence, her clear, posh voice had repeated. Janet stared at the crack and thought of her mother drowning in the dank smells and cabbage-soup routine of the old-age home. Another kind of collegiate system, mostly for old women. It was always the same, it seemed. Rising up with the crack came pain. Memories and a pitiless sense of loss. It felt as though the crack should be festering with flies, and as she thought that, Solomon did indeed swat away a thick fly and it buzzed down the crack.

  Solomon was talking to her. What was he saying. She could hardly ear him. Hear him. The blood beat in her breath and her head came too slowly. She was drowning and he seemed to be saying, cement. More cement. Again. We try again. Is that what he was saying. All the flies in the world seemed to be buzzing from the crack and she had to frown and squint and try to make out what Solomon was saying as he stepped out of the pool.

  No. She thought she held up her hand and shouted No. No more cement. No more glistening muscles and naked backs and honest sweat. And her hand brushed her eyes and she called for water. Gushing water. Turn on the tap. Bring the hose. Quickly quickly. And it was almost as though part of herself was gushing into the pool as the water came spurting and she grabbed his strong hands and unpeeled his surprised fingers from the hose and took it from him most persistently and with indubitable purpose she directed the jet of water straight into the depths of the crack. The fly never surfaced. The water frothed and gurgled in the dark depths before welling up. She and Solomon stood there. Side by side they stood in silence as Janet filled the pool. Lettie – Alice – Alice-Lettie brought out some tea but set it down on the grass behind them. It steamed for a while in the sun, but still the water jetted. The hose shuddered and pulsed and, after an hour, Solomon took it from her. His strong hands took the hose and he too directed the stream straight into the hungry mouth of the pool. The water bubbled and shimmered now. It lapped, limpid against the bright sides of the pool and Janet felt a lightening and the promise of cool water, of tender blue, even from the depths of her womb. The pool that her father had built. The womb that her parents had created between them. The pool and her body. And Solomon directed the streaming water that now danced. And the crack shook and became less substantial. Could they drown it. Could they simply leave the water running into it forever.

  But other business called.

  Alice-Lettie came out and reminded Janet that it was time to fetch the little one. Eish, it was getting much too late and the Madam did not want to hurry, ne.

  Janet fetched Sylvia and still the water pumped into the pool.

  The doorbell rang deep in the house whilst Alice-Lettie was feeding the little one, and Alice-Lettie brought the Madam from next door, Missies Eileen, so that they could talk outside and not wake up the Master, the Baas, who was sleeping.

  Janet started. She left Solomon, who had inserted the hose deep into the pool and was now trimming the grassy edges with his shears. It was strange to see Eileen-the-Understudy in the day. Maybe the sun could be a brilliant spotlight and the lawn a great green stage. She could raise her hand in a gesture of welcome and take her friend by the arm and wheel her round, away from the crack in the pool, towards the lounger under the willow tree. And they could chat with brittle pleasure. Swap little pleasantries concerning the blueness of the lovely day, the loveliness of Janet’s blue dress and, oh my goodness, the bold new hairdo that crowned Eileen-the-Understudy and emphasised her features so wonderfully. She could lean back on the extended lounger, and Eileen-the-Understudy could stretch out her long, lovely legs which were indeed longer and lovelier than Janet’s legs, even though they were not bad at all. Janet could stand before her friend as though she were on stage, somehow performing. And they could hint at the manly imponderability of their husbands. Hektor-Jan’s terribly skinned knuckles and Eileen’s pilot husband who was back for a night before flying off again on the Frankfurt route. He was sleeping as they spoke. These men of theirs that worked so hard at night and slept so soundly in the day. Men who came home smelling of perfume or of nothing at all. Men whose hands either wafted exotic scents or had somehow lost all the skin on their knuckles. They could shake their heads and try to smile fondly, and Eileen-the-Understudy could hand over the brown-paper package that her Phil had brought for Janet’s Hektor-Jan yet again. And they could look at the flat rectangular package that now lay on Janet’s lap and they could shake their heads and laugh. And Eileen-the-Understudy could nudge Janet with a friendly elbow and say, What about last night you naughty, naughty woman. Janet could shift within the shady, striped heart of the willow tree and say, Don’t, don’t talk about that, and Eileen-the-Understudy could chortle with laughter. And Janet could change the subject and tell Eileen-the-Understudy that it was Pieter’s birthday the following day and that Hektor-Jan had taken charge of the present, and Janet still did not know what it was. And Eileen-the-Understudy could hand over the next little package, a brighter one this time, and tell Janet that it was the sweetest piggy bank that Phil had told her that they had in Germany and which she had charged her husband to buy for little Pieter. And Janet
could thank her for her never-ending generosity and then they could watch Solomon through the veil of branches, now digging and turning over the flower beds, digging away whilst the long hose shuddered in the pool.

  And that is what Janet did even though most of her was pouring into the pool. She was proud of herself. What an actress. That she could be so calm and all the while the pool was churning with the new water that ran raw and cold from the tap at the side of the house, along the length of the hose across the vast lawn, straight into the white depths of the pool. Even as Eileen-the-Understudy spoke and tried to tease her about Frank van Zyl, Janet was plunging into the pool. And when Eileen-the-Understudy rose to go and said, Surely you must be off to fetch the children or do they walk home, Janet remained seated and simply smiled. Then she was alone with a vague sense that Eileen-the-Understudy’s little performance had just about matched her own and she almost broke into polite applause. But her hands were too far away and she just sat there, the water gushing and willow tree shivering in the heat. At last, she stood up and looked down in surprise as the two presents slipped to the ground. So Eileen-the-Understudy had visited; it had not been all a dream and she wandered over to the pool and saw that it was half full. She tried to think that it was half full, not half empty. Surely, she was a positive person at heart. Only a positive person could attempt to repair such a pool so as to spare her poor husband the trauma. Instead of halving a sorrow, she was prepared to bear the burden alone, but then she knew Hektor-Jan – possibly better than he did himself. And she could not trouble her father who had so much on his plate, who never made a meal of the fact that her mother took up almost all of his time. Amelia Amis MA was like a child. A demanding, recalcitrant child with a terrible temper and foul mouth. A child with fierce and adult urges. Not a mother or a wife, and certainly not a virgin. Amelia Amis seemed to have entered some fourth estate. No, her father had more than enough to keep him busy.