Shelley and Pieter were already munching Alice-Lettie’s lettuce and cheese sandwiches when Janet made her way through the kitchen. After the brilliance of outside, inside seemed dark. Janet smiled at their vague shapes and hid the presents in the radiogram drawers amongst the loose paper and the seven singles. Then she was humming Carpenters’ songs, snatches of Karen here and Richard there. She stood in the lounge for a while simply humming and letting her eyes grow accustomed to being inside.
Can we swim? Today, can we swim?
The children found her and banished the last chords of Mr Postman from her mind. Their loudness drowned the beginning of Solitaire and she heard herself asking for patience and calm, and that they were to give it another hour after eating and by that time, the pool would be full enough for a nice swim even though the new water would be very chilly. She spoke whilst they all fidgeted and Pieter’s eyes went everywhere.
And they did swim and the water was cold. But the thought that it was Friday afternoon and school was banished again for a brief while made them very excited. And Pieter, whose birthday was but hours away was unbearable and Janet had to call from the willow tree that if he did not stop teasing his sisters there would be no presents and they would not go to the farm the following day. He would not see his oupa and his various ooms. Hektor-Jan’s wild brothers. That shut Pieter up. Janet knew how he adored the hearty Afrikaans men, so different from her quiet father. Pieter came to apologise to her. His eyes stared large and wide beneath his wet fringe and he held his towel around his little body. He was a towel on legs, with staring eyes.
All right, said Janet. I know it’s exciting. But just take it easy.
I will take it easy, I swear I will take it easy, said Pieter and he went inside to get changed like a good boy.
The girls continued to play in the pool, but Janet called them out before long, before they froze in that fresh water. They lay shivering like seals on the hot slasto beside the pool.
When did she know.
When did she just know what was happening in the heart of the lounge.
Shelley and Sylvia had warmed up quickly and now lay panting in the heat. They would want to leap into the pool soon. As usual, their brown skin gleamed silver in the light.
Shadows rustled in the hot air and Janet sat up in her blue dress like a piece of sudden sky. It was as though she could hear the slither of a secret drawer to the right of the radiogram, then the scuffling of small hands amongst the paper and the seven singles. Then silence as the two gifts were prised from their hiding place and Pieter surely stuck out his tongue with the effort and concentration of such stealth. He may have looked over his shoulder, towards the door and the long passage to the bedroom where Bluebeard slumbered or towards the windows which overlooked the back garden where his mother lurked beneath the willow tree. Maybe he began to perspire, little droplets forming on his anxious brow. His hands must have begun to shake as he stared at the two presents. Should he open the larger or the smaller. The larger was plain and dull; the smaller brightly coloured. But it was smaller.
He opened the brown paper bag with its neat bars of Sellotape.
His little hands slipped into the slight gaps and tore quietly at the paper. He must have hesitated, surely, before the brown paper gave way with a sigh and out it came. Not the piggy bank that ingeniously oinked and demanded Deutsche Marks and Krugerrands. Not the clever contraption that offered a slit for coins or folded paper money. No. But there were slits to be sure. Cunning cracks and orifices which appeared to yearn, to clamour for incisive male attention. Heaving thighs and bouncing breasts and parts which surely not even Mommy seemed to have when she stood up in the bath and reached for a towel. And had he ever seen Mommy in such positions. Could the female form be bent and stretched in such startling ways, splayed and trussed and draped. Pieter must have turned the pages of the German magazine – banned from a moral, conservative, Christian South Africa – and stared in growing wonder. Did his mouth go dry. Did he tremble. Did he think of his little sisters with whom he fought and bathed and played. Did he just think of his mother, or maybe the glistening breasts of Alice that day he walked into her outside bathroom when the door was closed but unlocked and she was sitting in the zinc tub lathered in soap and shining and he had just wanted to see if it was she who was singing so softly and it was she and her breasts glistened like wet cannonballs with large nipples and creamy soap. Did he think of his grandmother’s mouth that opened so wide and came to eat him that day behind the pampas grass. Maybe he did not think at all.
Possibly the pages turned themselves and the women – black, white, yellow, with nipples of various colours but the same pink-brown and staring gash where their willies might have been – and the women lay back waiting to be exposed by his little hands.
Janet crashed into the lounge. Pieter did not even hear her footsteps through the kitchen and along the passage. He was falling down strange rabbit holes. Some were shaven and calling with craven mouths. Others bearded and whispering darkly. They were not singing Happy Birthday my sweet boy. Welcome to almost-double figures and we hope that you have a good year. He could not put his finger on what they said. But it cut him. He turned another page in this shocking wonderland and his mother burst into sight. For a moment, she seemed to leap from the pages. He looked from them to her. His breath thundered in his ears and he was stunned by her clothing, the bright blue dress that made her so opaque, so withdrawn and hidden, rather than by her cry. From the immediacy of such flesh and undisguised desire, his mother leapt fully clothed and he dropped the other women with their rude bits at his feet as his mother’s voice boxed his ears.
Pieter! came her voice and that’s who he was – Pieter.
It was hard.
It was hard to grab her agitated son whose mouth moved but from whom no sound came. Grab him and hold him and not break him in a storm of recrimination and retribution. To hold him and feel his stiff surprise and his hot little face. And then his voice came sobbing up in fear and embarrassment.
What would she say? What would Bluebeard do? A thief and a sneak. He had put his hands into secret drawers and exposed the women with no drawers. And now he was caught out and he had not even opened his real present from Mrs Wilson from next door. Would his birthday be banished?
How should she punish him. He seemed anguished already.
She untied her embrace. She held his shoulders and looked into his eyes.
Pieter, she said.
He could not look her in the eye. His breath shuddered and he was trying to cry but no tears came.
Was it an accident, she said.
Was this the first time.
Had he ever fiddled around his father’s side of the bed, looked under his mattress for more presents from Mr Wilson the pilot who travelled the world and came back with such things that Customs at the airport did not check or confiscate.
She held him and he shook his head. Then she picked up the offending magazine that lay splashed at their feet. She held it between two fingers like the bag of dog poo when Solomon did not come and she picked up all of Jock’s big stinking poos.
I didn’t mean to, he said trying not to look at it. I didn’t mean to. I thought it was my present. I swear –
We don’t swear in this house, said Janet, and she held the glossy magazine. It hung from her hands, now a bright, dead bird. What was she to do with it. Throw it away, as she wanted to. Fling it from her home and from her son. But men occasionally talk. Phil the pilot would surely ask Hektor-Jan – or possibly expect Hektor-Jan to thank him. Maybe he would wink at her husband and they would laugh. What might men do in such a situation. Then there would be questions. Things would go from bad to worse. What had she done with the German magazine.
Fetch me the paper we used to cover all the school books, said Janet.
Pieter ran away.
He returned with the paper – it was brown.
Scissors and Sellotape, said Janet and those appeared. Pieter w
as going to be good for a long time, she sensed.
Can I help you? said Pieter.
He will be good for a long time, thought Janet.
Mother and son cut a big rectangle of brown paper and made decent the catalogue of nakedness. They tore loud clear strips to make the same Sellotape bars to reinforce the packaging.
There is nothing wrong with ladies’ bodies, Janet tried to say as they Sellotaped the big brown fig leaf. There is nothing wrong with men’s bodies. It’s just that Mommy doesn’t like it when –
When what. What was she trying to say. Janet looked at the flat brown package between them as they knelt on the lounge floor.
Mommy does not like it when ladies are made to look like lumps of meat.
Pieter looked at her.
Lumps of meat, said Janet. Ladies are not lumps of meat, are they.
Pieter agreed fervently that no lady was a lump of meat.
They get paid to do that, said Janet. Someone pays them to look like a lump of meat. Then someone buys the magazine and the people who paid them to look like a lump of meat get the money. They do it all for the money. The money ties them all together. It’s like this Sellotape.
Mother and son stared at the striped symbol between them. Yuk, said Janet. Lumps of meat.
Pieter nodded. But he was going to nod at whatever she said. She left it at lumps of meat and they returned the magazine in its severe tunic to the drawer of the radiogram. It would lie in wait. Janet might make Hektor-Jan ask for it. Has Phil left anything for me. Usually he asked at the end of the month.
What’s that, Janet would love to say. Do you mean the porno mag, the butcher’s shop of flesh hooked and hanging on the lens of some German camera. The Erikas and Heidis and Giselas that call to you through the brown shirt of the paper wrapping. Dear God, Hektor-Jan, don’t you get enough of me. Must I lie awake at night with those women leering up at me through the mattress where you hide them on your side of the bed. Where you press them down with the weight of your body. Am I not enough. Look here, and here and here. Touch me here.
But she would hand over the little flat package, maybe pass it to him as he munched his breakfast. It would squat between them as he crunched his cornflakes. Then it – they – would go off with Hektor-Jan who might start whistling.
Janet shuddered.
What had her husband got their son for his birthday.
50.12cm
As simple as a jackal,
as tender as the sun,
the offal of my heart
of course belongs to him.
– Heidi Laing, from ‘Intimacy’, translated from the Afrikaans by Christina Thompson
After about four years with the Riot Unit, I was at the end of my tether. During a house penetration in Daveyton one evening, my nerves were so frayed that I fired a shot through a door without knowing who or what was on the other side. I realised that I was heading for disaster. I told my commanding officer what had happened and asked to be transferred to an administrative post.
– Johan Marais, Time Bomb: A Policeman’s True Story
It was going to be a long day. It had been a long night shift and it was going to be a very long day.
He sat in the car in the driveway. He was on time. His hand felt tighter. He flexed it again and paused before he opened the door. He expected Doug to be waiting. Doug and his sun-risers that had plagued his dreams. That had done nothing to relax him after work. And still no package from Phil. Promises, promises. How three hundred people sat in a plane and trusted Captain Phil to get them off the ground and back again safely. The Promising Pilot called Phil. He shook his head. His sore hand rested uncomfortably on his crotch.
It was their boy’s birthday. Not every day did your son turn nine. Hell, man, it was a special day and he reached for the door handle and got out of the car. He forced himself to breathe deeply and he listened to the sharp twittering in the skies. The dawn chorus. Doug did not add his voice to the growing melee in the trees.
No. There was no Doug with nasty news. Did that make him happy or sad.
He paused at the front door. The birds were wild this morning. And, no, he could not hear the heartbeat of the Kreepy Krauly about which Janet had complained so often. To be fair, she had not mentioned it for a while. Maybe she had forgotten. Maybe she had turned deaf. Maybe she had other things on her mind and he shoved the key into its wrinkled slot and twisted it.
He nearly stood on his son. The heir inside the house was dark and still. He got a real fright. He swore heavily. Fok, dropped from his lips. Jou moer, fell from his heart and mouth as he stumbled over Pieter. Before he knew it, his gun was in his hand. Before he could stop it, it was pointing at the tangle of his warm son, stirring blearily. The shot of adrenalin burst through his body. It was a bullet. Instantly he was ready to attack. His left hand held down his son and the right brought the gun to within an inch of his life.
Fok, he said. Jou moer. And there was the gun. And his head was about to burst. And his finger was tight on the trigger. But there was no explosion. Just Fok and Jou moer shot from his lips and Pieter did not even squeal as the swear words hit him.
How long were they locked in that embrace. When did his finger release the trigger and the burning taste subside in his mouth.
It’s my birthday, said little Pieter to the wolf.
It’s your birthday, the big wolf said to Pieter.
Then he understood. The words made sense and the gun went slack.
My seun, he said. My son. It’s your birthday and his son smiled up at him, he who loomed over his son with Fok and Jou moer shooting from his lips and a gun sticking right into his son’s head.
Double figures, Pieter’s voice was proud. I’m almost turning double figures, Pappie. He moved slightly and held up two five-pointed stars in the dark. His tiny hands.
The gun clunked to the floor. Pieter’s hands. He took his son’s hands in his own. Folded them into the meaty strength of his own hands and held them. All ten fingers and thumbs, each a year of his life and one spare. All that had happened in nine years. And Hektor-Jan could not remember his own ninth birthday. But he could remember his tenth. Turning double figures. His older brothers beating him with particular pleasure as he was now ten and could take it – ten times over.
Instead of punching little Pieter in the arm, kneeing him in the thigh or subjecting his wrists to a series of Chinese bangles, Hektor-Jan just held him.
Happy birthday, Gelukkige verjaarsdag, my seun, he said. Nine years old. And he held him in the dark as the house waited around him and the gun sulked behind him. He did not have to do anything to this warm body. It was his son and he could simply hold him. He could just love him. He held his son who had got up early to greet his father and to tell him that he was almost turning ten.
How is the trifle? asked Shelley as the car lurched off the tarred road and hit the dust and grind of the dirt track that led to the small farm.
Fine, called Janet. She held the Tupperware box on her lap. The trifle would be fine.
Be careful, came Shelley’s voice.
I will, called Janet as Hektor-Jan frowned his way through the smaller ruts and over the lesser stones.
They need to scrape this clear, he muttered. When last did they scrape the road.
The little car juddered and growled. The ground was sticky after the recent rain but the rocks were as hard as ever.
Pieter sat with his forehead pressed to the vibrating window. Janet could hear him behind her. He made small humming sounds that jumped and jarred as the car bumped along. He was talking to himself, and talking to the car. The car spoke through him.
Almost there, Janet called to the back seat.
Yay, came their voices and Pieter hummed quietly to himself.
Janet turned her attention from the back seat to her husband’s hand that fought with the gear lever and the steering wheel.
Then she frowned at the winding, lurching road.
; It had been a while.
When last did they visit the farm. It must have been well before Christmas. But warm enough to swim, as the children had come back from the reservoir dripping wet and claiming to have seen a water snake. And Shelley had found a mouse skull picked clean and white and glowing in the sun. The two chisel-shaped front teeth were intact, which was more than could be said for Shelley’s own front teeth.
And Oupa had had too much to drink, as always. And so had Willem and Koos and François, if she was not mistaken. One sad old man and his three sad sons. Did they drink to remember his wife, their mother. Did they drink to forget.
I hope no one will get too drunk, said Janet over the trifle and low enough for the children not to hear.
Hektor-Jan negotiated his way around a particularly deep donga and then shrugged. Who knows, he said. I am not my brothers’ keeper, or my father’s.
Janet frowned at the archaic phrasing and the gruff riposte.
There’s nothing wrong with a bit of booze, said Hektor-Jan. Pieter has just turned nine. I might have some, you know.
And before she could reply, there came the excited call.
The picannins! Look, Mommy, Pappie, the picannins!
Ahead of them, on the arc of the red and muddy road, stood a ragged tangle of black children. They appeared to be waiting. They always seemed to be waiting.
They got closer and then, as the car drew level, their faces broke into white smiles. Gap-filled grins and hands windmilling furiously. They called out in excited, bleating voices and a few of the girls thrust out their little hips and bottoms and began a sweet, staggering dance, all a-stamping and a-turning. Often Janet winced when their car trailed a shroud of red dust, but today there was no dust to choke their piping voices. Hektor-Jan concentrated on the road, but Janet and her three children waved from inside the car.
The Crack Page 22