The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  How kind of them to remember – even though, and possibly because, they had no child of their own. Janet adjusted her chin. What. No mention of the maid.

  Noreen smiled. Doug grinned. The present glowed.

  It was a book. They knew just how Janet approved of books. Pieter read the card first – good boy! – and then tore the paper carefully. Look, Ma, he said. He held up the book with the thundering horse on its cover. Black Beauty. Look, he showed his sisters. There was a girl on the cover, too. Shelley might want to read it. He may not quite want to, but it was his to have and hold, to wave in front of his sister. To watch her eyes, to negotiate favours in return for a chance to read the book. Or simply to have her ask again and again, safe in the certain proprietorship of the book with the stupid horse and dof girl on the cover.

  Thank you, Pieter said, and he kissed Auntie Noreen and shook Uncle Doug’s hand.

  Then Pieter showed them his stitches and mentioned his medication.

  It was a rock. He fell, Sylvia verified. And Oupa hurt his face – bad.

  Well I never, Noreen’s eyebrows rose to meet her perfect hair as hunting and guns and dried mud in the barrel of the .22 were breathlessly shared.

  Doug stood behind Noreen, his hands on the couch.

  And then what happened, asked Noreen. Her voice came quietly, in counterpoint to Pieter’s and Sylvia’s breathlessness.

  They told her, whilst Shelley sidled out of the room. Doug’s eyes followed her.

  Then she was back, in time for the bit about the ambulance.

  Noreen was nodding, looking through the children’s graphic and gory enthusiasm right at their mother’s strange indulgence. Noreen frowned. She raised her eyebrows. That was when Shelley stepped right before her and whipped out the dead guinea fowl from behind her back.

  Look what I shot, she said. Oom Koos said that I am a natural.

  She held it by its neck. Its blue and red face flopped against her little hand, and it dangled bloody and dead right under Noreen’s nose.

  She did not make a sound, and Janet managed to squash her yelp of surprise into a sudden gasp of, Shelley –

  Where had the bird come from. In all the dreadful business of the weekend, Shelley had never shown her the bird. It dangled, a dead thing, in the lounge. Noreen raised a hand. Would she touch it or push it away. Janet’s hands fluttered too. The thing hung dark and heavy from Shelley’s hand. Like a human head. Speckled with white thoughts and pondering deeply.

  Doug saved the day. He leapt forward before a sudden headache could overwhelm his wife and his neighbour’s wife. He took the spotted bird from Shelley’s hand and held it, cradled it.

  Well I never, he echoed Noreen. A guinea fowl. You hear them in the park, he said, But I have never seen one this close. Look, look at its helmet, and he stroked the conical head gently in case he might cause its closed eyes to flutter suddenly and the firm feathers to squawk to life. Look, he said again, ostensibly to Shelley, perhaps to himself. Like a little doek. And he took the helmet between a forefinger and thumb, and said, Doek, again. He murmured to them all, In the same bold pink, yes, and the face in the same bright blue that Emily used to wear. He smiled back at Noreen, and then turned to Janet. Your Alice wears a pink dress with a pink doek, hey.

  Janet brought her hands down and tilted her face. She did not like the way Doug was twisting the bird’s head to look at her, its pointed beak curving towards her, its eyes closed as it sought her out with its sharp little mind. And now he was opening its mad eyes. What would he do next, make it squawk out the name of Alice-Lettie like a feathery bagpipe pressed under his arm with the last wheeze in its lungs. Would he leap towards her and shove it in her face and suggest nasty things about her husband. The bird’s spots danced in front of her eyes.

  Don’t be silly, Doug, she said.

  Her voice came clearly and quickly. She could not have done a better voice. It was a mother’s voice. It expressed patience tried and tested. It was a tired voice. It said, Come on, you silly little boy, that is quite enough, enough now, thank you. Just who do you think you are with your guinea fowl and your stupid imprecations. For goodness’ sake, grow up.

  And Doug grinned like a little boy.

  Had he heard what she said.

  He shuffled up to Shelley, a pantomime waltz with the dead bird, and eased it into her hands. You clever girl, he said looking over her head at her mother.

  And then the children were calling New-Jock who was trying to get at the bird and Uncle Doug was laughing and pulling Noreen to her feet as though he was going to hold her up and make her squawk too.

  Thank you for the present, said Pieter with no prompting from his mother. She could let them go, their neighbours, that man from across the wall, the creature that lurked in rhododendrons and in the corners of her mind. She could rise, force a smile, even peck Noreen on the cheek and have her soft cheek touched in turn by Doug’s lips except that, as always, as some men do, they sought her lips and almost tried to taste her surprise.

  Give Higher our best, said Doug and he seemed to look around the room, as though noting the fact that Higher was not there and that Alice-Lettie was nowhere to be seen. Both were out. And then, they too were gone and Janet was left to bury the bird in the bin, except Shelley kicked up a fuss and quoted Oom Koos, who said that with a plum sauce the guinea fowl is second to none.

  They were going to have to cook the damn thing.

  Right, my girl, said Janet. But then you must boil the kettle and pour it over the guinea fowl and pluck out every feather. I suppose Oom Koos told you how to do that, and how to gut it.

  He did, said Shelley, and her chin was at precisely the same angle and her tone matched her mother’s.

  Then I shall fill the kettle, Janet said, and went into the kitchen.

  A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. Hektor-Jan trusted that he was a wise son. Looking down on his father, he had not wanted to ask if he had made him glad. Not when his father was swaddled like a baby in a manger, his face a white mask of bandaging that buried plastic supports and tubes. A tangle of tubes like thoughts came flowing from his father’s face.

  He did not want to think about what heaviness he might have caused his mother. His hand strayed to his pocket and the fingers of his right hand enclosed her Swiss Army knife, the very knife she had used for her biltong and for her stubborn corns on the sides of her feet. It was the knife that he was meant to have. He did not need to ask. At her passing, just before she rose up to claim her seat at the right-hand side of God, she had nodded to the bedside drawer and he had opened it. There, beside her small Bybel, was the knife, so red and modern. He was flicking through the complication of gadgets when her cord was cut and she passed. It was a good death, he could appreciate that now. He was older now, much older. Too old. He carried the weight of his mother’s soft face, still soft and warm in death as he kissed her after her passing. He remembered how he had carried the implacable softness of his mother outside the square house – and how he held her red knife that sought a kind of revenge. There was a stupid brak. It ran up to him as he emerged with the weight of his mother’s passing heavy on his heart and his hands still clutching her knife with its myriad spikes and blades, and the knife had sought new flesh, a life for a life. It had found a secret slit: the artery and lung it ruptured released almost no blood. The dark liquid ran inwards and the dog drowned in its own blood, silently. An old hunter’s trick. No other creature need be alarmed.

  He had wiped the biggest blade clean afterwards with his own thumb and his blood had mingled with the dog’s blood and he could have howled for her passing. Just like a dog. Not their dog, though, for it had died silently. He kept the knife deep in the folds of his mother’s Bybel – often buried in Revelations – in the bottom drawer of his bedside table. Except when he visited his childhood home where she died – the plot in Springs. And he had it with him now.

  It was getting late. Hektor-Jan w
iped his face now as he turned into Davidson Street, the Bunny Park on his right and the neighbourhood on his left. A wise son maketh –

  Then he saw the figure on the pavement, waiting beside the plane trees with their peeling bark, mottled and growing ghostly in the dying light. The Ford Cortina rumbled up the road. He disengaged the gears and let the car coast quietly along the empty road before turning in to his driveway, the driveway his father-in-law had paved. All he had to do was press the brakes and switch her off. And the handbrake creaked.

  The dark figure stepped forward as though summoned by the handbrake.

  Hektor-Jan did not turn to look at the man. He let him stand beside the car, black and silent.

  The streetlight from across the road looped a soft halo, lopsided with the angle, around Doug’s head. His forehead and the side of his face were brighter, and his nose and chin gleamed. But the rest of his features were dark distortions. Hektor-Jan let him stand there, a chiaroscuro of ambiguous intent.

  At last, letting go of his mother’s knife, he opened the car door. Doug had to move back, and Hektor-Jan stepped out into the night. The world was speckled. The plane trees filtered the light and scattered darkness across the face of the earth. He saw it and wondered if that was good.

  It’s no good, Doug shook his shining head, a sad angel.

  It’s no good, Hektor-Jan repeated.

  Goodness in a fallen world. There were shadows, but there were shadows because there was light. The world could be fallen only if there had been goodness, surely. Goodness and mercy. All the days of his life.

  What a day, said Doug.

  What a day, he said.

  On your son’s ninth birthday, said Doug.

  Ja, his ninth, he said.

  Don’t you wonder, sometimes, Doug said.

  He wondered. How could he not wonder.

  All these signs, said Doug.

  How could he not wonder when there were all these signs.

  Signs, he said.

  It makes me so angry, said Doug. His voice shook. He must be angry. He snapped open the metal flask and offered it to Hektor-Jan. A doppie, he said. To drown the anger.

  Douse the flames. Swallow their pride.

  Hektor-Jan looked at the silver flask, yellow in the shattered streetlight. Doug’s eyes gleamed.

  I have not forgotten, said Hektor-Jan.

  You have had a lot on your plate, said Doug, handing over the flask.

  I have not thought of anything else, he said, accepting the drink.

  You could try to forget, said Doug.

  With the garden boy, he said, wiping his lips and handing back the flask.

  Some women – Doug’s lips curled around the flask and his voice slipped into the hollow cylinder. He drank. Hektor-Jan waited.

  Some women like that, Doug’s voice emerged.

  Some women, he said. Janet, he said.

  The law, Doug said.

  It is against the law of the land, he said. She can’t just –

  Sex across the colour line, said Doug. His hand shook and he handed the last drops to Hektor-Jan.

  All their previous and present thinking and murmuring in the darkness of dawn and dusk, their drinking and wondering now came to settle down on the vicious word, sex. There. It was said. Doug said, Sex, and lo, there was sex and Hektor-Jan saw that it was not good. In the beginning was woman, and the woman was with him, and the woman was Janet. But there was a snake and that snake was sex. And scenes from the holding cells came welling up in the whisky and he swallowed so that they settled back into the pit of his stomach, and he swallowed so that he could not think more clearly. He handed the flask to Doug. Then his hand did not go to his concealed shoulder holster to reach for his gun. Instead, the knife sprang to his fingers of his right hand as his left gripped Doug by the throat and held him fast against the black and white bark of the thick tree. He moved so suddenly that he surprised himself.

  Be sure, his voice blurred thickly in the dark, his tongue streamed whisky into the night. Be fokken sure, when you say –

  Doug did not struggle. Even as the longest blade pressed against the side of his left eye, touched the surface of his shining sclera so that if he blinked he sliced open his eyelid. Doug’s eyes stared fixedly in the hollow light. He did not flinch. His eyes did not flicker even as the blade gently dented the left eyeball.

  So, you want to see, Doug’s voice struggled through the stranglehold. It tried to be matter-of-fact. The facts mattered.

  Maak seker, said Hektor-Jan switching to his more urgent Afrikaans. Make sure. Maak baie seker, and he was in the holding cells and even though he was about to insert a Swiss Army lever that would move Doug’s world, root out the jelly of his left eye, Hektor-Jan’s own foundations shifted. Doug was pressed into the plane tree. Hektor-Jan could fall no further. He leaned into Doug’s wiry warmth. The knife dropped to one side and his full weight came to rest on Doug’s slender frame. They could have been lovers. The flask clinked to the ground and his breath came in hot spurts in the close night.

  For you, Doug sounded almost tearful. I am your neighbour. Anything. Nothing is too much trouble, he wheezed out the words beneath the weight of Hektor-Jan. The man’s one great hand crawled up his chest and Doug felt it come to rest around his throat.

  His Adam’s apple was sharp and hard. It convulsed with a sudden swallow, sliding like one of the strange gadgets in the knife. To break his neighbour’s neck, even with Hektor-Jan’s left hand, was no trouble at all. Grip tightly and a sudden wrench. That would be all.

  Maak baie, baie seker, said Hektor-Jan again and then he forced himself to stand upright whilst breath whispered back into Doug’s body.

  Jesus, said Doug.

  Hektor-Jan let the blasphemy squeeze past.

  Jesus Christ, and he cleared his throat. One hand ran to this throat, the other covered his left eye. Jesus Christ.

  That is enough, said Hektor-Jan. The knife again flicked out a blade.

  What is ever enough. Doug sounded bitter. He rubbed his throat. He wiped the other hand across his left eye and winked experimentally.

  They had hugged. Now this thin, skraal mannetjie was winking at him.

  Hektor-Jan raised his hand. The knife slid into the heart of the darkness. Bliksem, he swore. Jou moer. And he stepped closer again. Winking at him –

  That’s your special knife, Doug’s voice was quick. His hand reached out and stalled the arm of Hektor-Jan. The one you always use.

  Don’t make me, said Hektor-Jan.

  Doug managed to smile grimly. Don’t make you, he said. He paused.

  She knows that that is your special knife.

  She knows. The kids know. They know not to touch it. I keep it safe with my little Bybel. Pietertjie once took it. He has never touched it again.

  Right, said Doug. Then he tried the Afrikaans word. Reg, he said. Reg so. His throat rattled with the glottal g.

  Hektor-Jan frowned in the darkness. What was –

  Leave the knife where she will find it, said Doug. Where only she will see it. And I am telling you, before you know it, your garden boy will be playing with your knife and keeping it deep in his pocket. Just there. And Doug reached out and touched Hektor-Jan close to his groin so that he stepped backwards and looked down at Doug’s hand.

  Jesus, said Hektor-Jan.

  Don’t let me say I didn’t tell you, said Doug and his hand stayed where it was. It was Hektor-Jan who muttered Jesus again and who stepped back some more.

  Doug picked up the fallen flask. There were a few drops left. He tilted the flask and drank them all.

  Hektor-Jan’s lips moved in the darkness. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round thy table, he mouthed.

  Something fluttered through the trees and brushed his shoulder. He wiped it away. It was a gun-metal feather, speckled with white.

  A black snowflake.

  From the wings of what dark angel had it fal
len, had it been plucked.

  ‌2.048m

  On 16 June 1976 fifteen thousand schoolchildren gathered in Soweto to protest at the government’s ruling that half of all classes in secondary schools must be taught in Afrikaans. Students did not want to learn and teachers did not want to teach in the language of the oppressor. Pleadings and petitions by parents and teachers had fallen on deaf ears. A detachment of police confronted this army of earnest schoolchildren and without warning opened fire, killing thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson and many others. The children fought with sticks and stones, and mass chaos ensued, with hundreds of children wounded and killed and two white men stoned to death.

  – Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

  Traps and snares are generally easy to construct and may be very useful for survival, by extending your limited rations, as well as for such military purposes as setting alarms and explosive ambushes.

  In its simplest form the snare is a wire or cord loop placed on a game path in such a way that the animal puts its head into it and is strangled. It is easy to make and set and is very efficient. It is very frequently used by Africans for killing animals and birds.

  The placing of traps and snares is very important. You should look for obvious feeding and watering places, nests or folds, game paths or gaps in fences, frequent use of which is indicated by fresh trails or droppings.

  The snare should be placed, as far as possible, in some place where the game is forced to pass. If necessary, create such a situation by arranging bush or stones in such a way as to ensure that the victim’s head must enter the loop. The size of the loop must be such that the animal’s head but not its body will pass through easily. Set as many snares as you can. For bait, use fruits or meat, including entrails from any animal or bird you may have been able to kill.

  – Col. D. H. Grainger, Don’t Die in the Bundu

  ‌

  Pregnant, said Derek-Francis, his hand with the script fluttering around his head. Pregnant.

  It looked like he was trying desperately to swat away the thought. The very idea of her being pregnant. Filled with a child. She knew her words, everything was blocked and choreographed. She had it all down pat. Now, it threatened to go down the spout. Because she was up the duff. Pregnant.