The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  Then the back door opened. Would it be Alice.

  It was Janet.

  Hektor-Jan found himself holding his breath. He peered across at his wife, who carried a steaming tin mug before her, as though she was performing some balancing act. For a moment, Janet did not move.

  She blinked in the sun. So clear, and yet so cold. It was deceiving. She could not move for a moment. She adjusted her fingers so that the heat from the heavy mug of tea did not burn her hand. There, that was better. Now she could look up, look across the garden at the rhododendrons.

  She stared right at him. Hektor-Jan felt hot beneath the stupid muddy mask. He dared not blink. He dared not breathe. Like a cautious steenbok, or a delicate impala, his wife seemed to test the air. She looked nervous all right. A little way below him, Hektor-Jan heard Doug’s long intake of breath. At least he seemed to be enjoying this. Janet stepped forward.

  Janet felt her legs move. She stepped forward. The garden came to greet her. The crisp grass whispered underfoot and she walked a tightrope line across the huge lawn, straight to the pool and to Solomon.

  Solomon, her voice managed to say. Solomon.

  But he seemed lost in thought at the side of the pool, and she had to reach out and touch him.

  Hektor-Jan watched. Janet raised her left hand, a white bird, ringed with the golden wedding band, the ring he had given her as well as the eternity ring, making doubly sure. The rings glinted in the thin light. And that hand, that tiny hand, reached out and touched the tall black man. Doug’s breath came in a low whistle, soft enough only for Hektor-Jan’s ears. It was as though the pressure cooker of Hektor-Jan’s brain was beginning to steam. Jesus, came Doug’s whisper, as Janet handed the garden boy his tea and he took it with a smile, clumsily holding the white woman’s hand that could not seem to let go of the mug.

  Her hand would not work. It seemed caught in the handle, stiff from the cold, yet fearful of the scalding tin. It stuck there awkwardly. Solomon held the mug in his rough hand, not burning. Janet had to raise her other hand and prise her fingers free. Thanks, Solomon, she said, and she laughed in embarrassment.

  Thank you, my Madam, he said and slurped his tea. She stood where she was, unable to move. She had not been this close to the pool for weeks. Just like the tarpaulin, she had pulled her daily routine over her mind and tried to bury any thoughts of the crack. But she could see how it strained. How, beneath the rough material pegged down on either side of the pool, there had been much movement. It looked like the tarpaulin might soon split. Its central seam appeared strained. The rows of makeshift tent pegs almost hummed in the hard earth as the gap must have grown between them, and pulled the tarpaulin unbearably taut.

  What the hell were they doing. They stood there. The kaffir looked at her. She looked at the covered pool. He had spoken; she had laughed. They were alone together. That was all. That was enough. Was it enough. A shy laugh. Her embarrassed laugh. And the boy was staring at her. Hektor-Jan felt an odd prickle. From all sides, the leaves pressed down on his body. Here they were. Three men staring at his wife. His skin felt stiff. It seemed as though the dry mud was pulling his face apart. Then Janet turned to the garden boy. She said something. He replied. He nodded, then he shook his head. His hand went to his overalls. He reached inside, deep into his pocket and Hektor-Jan held his breath. Now, he did feel dizzy. Not a sound came from Doug. No breathing, no soft blasphemy. The boy brought his hand out into the light. There, shining in the sun, as brazen and as brassy as his wide grin, was Hektor-Jan’s knife. His mother’s knife. The knife that he kept safe and sound. The knife that no one but he was supposed to touch. The knife that nestled against Die Bybel in his bedside drawer. What the hell was it doing in the garden boy’s pocket. The ladder shuddered beneath his feet. Hektor-Jan felt as though he was going to fall. His jaw tightened and his teeth ground as he tried not to move. It was not over yet. What more was to come. Would she hug him. Throw her arms around him. Give him a big, open-mouthed kiss. Would she turn, with his child inside her, large and right there in her belly before her, before them all, and offer herself to him.

  Jesus, came Doug’s voice again. Jesus Christ Almighty.

  Jesus Christ Almighty, his own lips twisted silently, and he swore with Doug’s voice. Here he perched like Lazarus, waiting for the healing hand, but all he saw before him was the horror of those black hands and her white hands. And as his lips moved and Doug’s Christ gasped in the smothering leaves, Hektor-Jan saw how she started opening the knife. He watched as the kaffir watched her. She struggled. Then the kaffir had the nerve to help her. To touch her hand, to take his knife from her. There. Out came the big blade, the longest, the sharpest. The kaffir handed it back to her. What were they doing. What dreadful game were they playing. Hektor-Jan swayed on the ladder. How long before he could hold still no longer, before he had to bellow and shout and reclaim his knife and his wife. But he bit his tongue. Warm, dark metal slipped down his throat as his mouth bled. He swallowed, and swallowed again, his face cruelly distorted by the drying mud.

  The two figures turned to face the pool. Again, they stood there. A strange couple. He knew that it was only a matter of time before they became pillars of salt in the Sodom and Gomorrah of his back garden. Janet bent down. The kaffir stood behind her. Surely not, not there in the daylight, in front of the dog. In front of him and Doug. But his wife raised the knife and slowly sawed through one of the tight cords, which tethered the tarpaulin. It took a while. Maybe the knife was not as sharp as he thought. There was a sudden ping, and the tough string snapped. The tarpaulin shuddered, then lay still.

  They watched as Janet slowly raised the loose corner. She lifted it and looked beneath it. Then she turned to the kaffir and he did the same: squatted down beside her and gawped at the dark pool beneath its stifling cover. They did not stand up. The remained there, crouching in the garden, peering at the pool.

  Hektor-Jan had the strangest feeling that he could, with a single sharp word, suddenly cut the air and, quickly and terribly, lift the blue sky and the blond garden, roll them back to reveal the terrible bones that lurked beneath it all. And despite the ache in his mouth and the rigid pull of the skin of his face, despite the knuckle-bursting grip on the branches and the way his eyes popped in the dry air, it was the fearful stiffness in his groin that finally released the shuddering groan. God. The Afrikaans, God, coughed up from his chest, his heart. God shot from his throat like wretched phlegm. God spat into the morning air.

  But before he could roar in the name of the father, and in the name of his mother’s knife and his children’s innocence, the hands of Doug pressed hard against his lips. The man materialised right beside him, out of the thick leaves, and smothered him.

  No, Doug whispered in his ear. No, no, no. Not here. Not now. Later. Not in the garden. Do it later. Take your time. Take your fucking time, man.

  And his knuckles nodded. His eyes tightened and the liquid iron in his throat agreed. He made a sound. Something sub-vocal – a deep sound, deeper than the holding cells in the Boksburg-Benoni Police Station. Deeper and darker than all the writhing, gurning sounds knotted together. Ja. Ja. This time, this time he would take his fucking time all right.

  Slowly, with great care, Doug’s stifling fingers released him.

  Janet tried not to think of it as an omen. As Eileen-the-Understudy smeared make-up on her face in the busy classroom, and the helter-skelter of the opening night whirled around them, Janet tried not to think of the crack. Instead, she tried simply to watch as any tiny cracks or wrinkles on her face disappeared without a blemish beneath the cloying make-up. At last. It had come to this night. Everyone bustled. Everyone was shot through with delicious, opening-night nerves. Their first real performance. Where had the time gone. It seemed like only yesterday that –

  Five minutes, called someone.

  Dear God, Eileen-the-Understudy cried out, almost dropping the mascara, which feathered the dark borders of bonnie Jean’s eyes. Janet raised a
hand to squeeze her neighbour’s arm.

  Feet scuttled past the classroom assigned to the women.

  Someone moaned about the rough tartan and another voice made a silly joke about a rough tart, Anne. Nervous voices shouted with laughter at the ridiculous wordplay. The lights in the classroom were very bright. All the desk lights that they had brought in for the make-up shone like hot flowers. Janet felt giddy. Bonnie Jean, she whispered to herself, Come home to bonnie Jean.

  Two minutes, another voice yelled through the open door. Derek wants a word.

  It’s the best I can do, Eileen-the-Understudy’s voice trembled. She handed Janet the little mirror. It was fine. Her face was fine. Quite bright. She glowed. And it was not just the make-up. Everyone said how she glowed. The bun in her oven made her glow. She must be the first bonnie Jean with a bun in the oven, and Janet had placed a protective arm around her belly, and had smiled. The elasticated tartan skirt was a marvel. There were more pins than usual so that the skirt did not split. But that was fine. As long as she could still dance (carefully) and act and sing (heartily). She was way too large to be Karen Carpenter; she was bonnie Jean.

  There was a great scraping of chairs in the little classroom that spelt out a is for apple, b is for bat, c is for cat, and 1 × 1 = 1, 2 × 1 = 2, 3 × 1 = 3. There were children’s drawings on the wall. Firemen and policemen in thick wax crayon, caricatures, angels or Icaruses flying in white heavens with puffy clouds and squiggly birds and suns that were squashed in neat corners with a prickle of yellow rays, bright porcupines shining down with light.

  Like children released for a long-awaited break, the women in the cast threw themselves from the innocent classroom, out into the corridor that gleamed with cold neon light.

  The last few relatives scuttled inside the Rynfield Primary School hall. Children with gloved hands keeping their applause warm for later, fathers ushering their charges with breath that came like candyfloss in the crisp Highveld night. The expectation was palpable.

  Break a leg, called Eileen-the-Understudy’s voice. Break your waters, she seemed to add, but it was someone else, a member of the considerable chorus, who shouted about needing more than water during the break. And there were naughty nudges and giggles as they scampered into Derek-Francis’s masterful shush at the entrance of the stage door. He looked across at his Highland women from the top of the steps, and smiled. He did not say a word, just raised a funnel of fingers to his lips and kissed them expressively. Then it was thumbs up, and he threw open the door.

  The warmth hit them. The hot air and the breath of the big audience, all filling the hall fit to burst. And the Highland men were waiting. All those men in their kilts and sporrans, bristling men ready to burst into song. And the murmurs and coughs and last-minute conversations of their audience welled up and flooded the stage, which they now filled, filing into their assigned positions. The curtain was still down, but beneath it and through it poured the sounds of their real, live audience! It was one minute before Derek-Francis would pull the great curtain across and unleash them – or let the audience swamp them – however you saw it. Then lights would flood the stage, and their singing would burst forth. All their preparation. All that time and effort. All carefully co-ordinated, sculpted and crafted from chaos by the fluttering hands of Derek-Francis. Benoni would become Brigadoon. The highveld of South Africa would become the Highlands of Scotland. What magic would they weave.

  Weave your magic, hissed Derek-Francis, and even then, he waved a script, a flutter of white feathers as he wove a nervous flight path through the dim lighting on the stage. Then he drew himself up to his full height, and paused. It is 15 June 1976, he declaimed. We shall all remember this night. Go on, make it a night to remember.

  And so they did.

  They lay down and pretended to sleep. The slumber of a hundred years. They were now unconscious, and a century had slipped by. They all breathed deeply, as Derek-Francis had trained them. Someone, whose job it was to snore, snored magnificently.

  The curtains gasped aside and the overture burst from the little orchestra pit. There was spontaneous applause. What an audience. For a moment the ERADS players were taken aback. For a single second, they seemed to lie there stunned. But the music propelled them forwards, upwards, slowly onto their feet. They stretched and yawned. All those hours of rehearsing took over; the practising saved them.

  When Janet rubbed her eyes, then opened her eyes, she was amazed at the big bed of pale flowers. All those pretty faces, soft petals, glowing in the dark. A whole pool of soft mouths and pale cheeks and dark eyes. They moved constantly. As the opening number swelled on stage, the living sea in the hall shifted and seemed to sigh. What a gathering. All come together in the school hall to enjoy their performance. Families and friends, old and young from all the corners of the East Rand. From Springs and Sunward Park and Kempton Park, from Boksburg and Brakpan and even from Nigel, all come to Benoni and Brigadoon.

  And before she knew it, it was her turn to be surrounded by excited women. And there was Eileen-the-Understudy, throwing herself with such desperate skill into her non-speaking part. Every gesture was a wild plea for attention, and as the men sang to Janet, sang to their own bonnie Jean, bonnie Jean tried to smile at the nameless Highland lass, her best friend Eileen-the-Understudy.

  Then came the part that Eileen-the-Understudy had warned her about. What would her husband, her real husband make of the kiss. Did Hektor-Jan know that she was going to kiss another man on stage. Had she told him. Was it a surprise. Where did the line between art and life begin and end. What would her children say. Such were the challenges when you secured a main part. There was no place to hide. All eyes were on you. Had she considered that all eyes would be on her.

  Janet swelled with pride, fit to burst. Her child danced merrily within her as the music flooded the hall again and the great chorus lifted them up on tenor wings and Highland flings. She stood there, bonnie Jean, on the edge of a great moment. Charlie would come to her soon. The chorus of men and women would single her out in a moment. There she would stand, the centre of attention and Eileen-the-Understudy would bow imperceptibly and acknowledge at last that the casting of Derek-Francis had been faultless and that she should be kissed. She would raise her face to greet the lips of her true love, and the audience would gasp as they saw the shocking likeness. Who would have thought. How had they managed that. What were the chances that the handsome Charlie and beautiful bonnie Jean were perfect reflections. Peas in a pod, repeating patterns in splendid tartan.

  There would be no power cut. The hall would not be plunged into a sudden abyss of stunned silence that choked the stage and strangled the song. No, the chorus would continue. Janet shook her head. Charlie was dancing closer. He and his coterie of leaping laddies. There would be no sudden darkness. She shook her head again. Hektor-Jan would not leap up. Do you take this lawful man to be your wedded husband. Charlie came closer. Those whom God has joined let no man put asunder. Her husband would not tear himself from the crowd and split the song with his thunderous voice. Surely not. That would not happen. It was a play. All the world, well, at least Benoni, was a stage, and they merely players. It was not real. Surely everyone could see that it was not real life.

  For when in real life, does a man in a lovely kilt with a lovely lilt to his voice, your very own handsome shadow, come leaping up to you during the climax of a chorus, and take you by the hand and kiss you. When does your baby flutter his tiny hands and applaud your wonderful efforts from right inside you. When does a song and the presence of a man hold so many simultaneous possibilities. Would the lights continue to burn brightly, would the song continue to be sung. Would the brave world of Brigadoon rebuff the big world. And as Charlie tilted his wilting chin to kiss her, Janet finally let go of the cold darkness outside, let go the sense of a power cut, the jangling keys from the nasty caretaker and the horrendous crack in the pool at the bottom of the garden.

  Shelley’s Secret Journal

&n
bsp; Granny, all of your words begin with in. I have looked in the dictionary the big one in the lounge and every time it means not. Not definite not dubitable not eluctable. Is that because you are stuck in the care home? Is that why you keep saying why is there no room in the inn? It can also mean inn. Like baby Jesus. Is that what you mean? I winked. I winked Granny. You did not see me wink. I see for the first time that the word in is right inside the word wink. Did you say that on purpose Granny? I don’t understand. I love you Granny but I don’t understand. Pieter is a silly boy. He got some money from Uncle Doug for doing something and he bought some chappies but indubitably he will not share them. He says that there are plenty more where those came from. He also says that he has found a tooth and is going to put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy so that he can get more money. He showed it to me. He is inveterate about money and it is a big tooth. I asked him where he found it but then he started to cry so I did not remind him that there is no tooth fairy or Easter Bunny or Father Christmas and I did not tell him that it is not the stork that is bringing us a new baby brother or sister but that it was the sex act all along. I almost told him about that to make him grow up a bit but then I remembered what you said. Granny why did you not see me wink? I winked three times. Love, Shelley.

  ‌4.096m

  I hear their spirits marching, marching in a dream

  Coming like a river, swelling like a stream.