The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  Now, tell me about the Madam, Hektor-Jan said softly, wiping his hands.

  The morning would dawn cold and drear. It was going to be an overcast day, that morning of Wednesday, 16 June 1976. There would be no sun –

  Janet opened the garage door and peered out into the new world. It was still dark. There was iron in the air –

  She eased her belly through the little gap then closed the door behind her. Still dressed as bonnie Jean, with make-up caked and smeared with tears, she seemed to tiptoe off stage, across the little paved area to the back door. Her movements were slow, but certain. She had little time, but to move took so much effort. Her time was upon her. She dared not look up. The crack was there. It had come –

  She reached the shore of the back door, and clung to the handle. Her belly heaved and she had to stop. Was it locked. She paused, then she opened both doors in the darkness and half fell into the house –

  Her breath came loudly. She was already hoarse, but her lips still maintained the mantra, bonnie Jean. It was all she had left. Bonnie Jean, the memory of Brigadoon, and her children –

  Shelley. Pieter. Sylvia.

  They were warm and snug. But not for long. The penknife was slimy in her hand. It was warm and slippery and for a moment she thought that she had dropped it, but it was still there. Had it cut her hand too –

  First Shelley. Then Pieter. Then Sylvia.

  She eased them out of their cosy sleep. It was time. They had to come –

  Mommy, said Shelley almost crossly in her sleep and she had to say, Shelley, with the most urgent of whispers. Pieter was rubbing his eyes and asking about Jock and Sylvia needed to wee, but there was no time. No time at all –

  They were half-swaddled in their dressing gowns as she ushered them down the passage, through the dark kitchen and out of the back door –

  Quickly, quickly she kept murmuring in their little warm ears, but she did not touch them with her bloody hands –

  Then they were outside in the black dawn, the last shiver of night. Janet guided them past the garage and Lettie-Alice’s silent kaya and along the grass beside Doug and Noreen’s wall with the scarecrowed rhododendrons tall and still. What would Doug do now –

  Janet bit her lip and held out her arms like a shepherd. Her children moved with her, hunched figures under the greying sky. Janet was a big mother hen –

  They slipped past the pampas grass, past old Jock’s grave and the thought caught in her throat. Then they veered off across the top of the garden towards the pool. All the time, Janet tried to concentrate on what they were doing, but all the time she kept glancing to her left, to see if they were safe –

  They made it –

  At the far end of the pool, they assembled. A tiny huddle of dressing gowns and more yawns and half-hearted complaints –

  Janet held them to her, and they slumped onto the slasto together, the cold slasto, the crazy paving was damp beneath them. Janet pressed them to her great belly, so full, so gravid. Her tight skin shuddered. Her arms would not reach around all of them –

  Shush, she said. Not a sound –

  They were good children. Mostly, they were very good children. They would do as they were told. They would hunch down with her, hunker down in the darkness, which was already becoming grey. The air was damp and cold. Their breath came and went, came and went in little wisps. Small ghosts that got lost in the grey of the dawn as they huddled together. Janet steeled herself –

  She looked over their little heads, down the length of the garden –

  Was it simply darkness. Were there just shadows. No –

  No. In the first grey light of the new day, she could see it. There could be no doubt now –

  It was the crack. It was huge –

  And the empty pool swam into focus as the light came, the lightening of the eastern horizon. The whole length of the ruptured pool was yielded up and Janet pressed her children to her. And even in the hushed silence, with just their little breaths, there seemed to be other sounds. Things were on the move. The fissure was swimming still, the crack was creeping –

  And in the burgeoning light, Janet looked down the length of the garden. Her eyes followed the dramatic zigzag of black, the great crack that unzipped the garden, split it into two jagged sides and tore right up to the house. And even as Janet looked, the crack seemed to dive beneath the house with a black sound. They had just made it. She had got the children out in the nick of time. The house seemed to shudder. There was certainly a splitting sound. Janet gasped. Her father’s house. Their home –

  The sky grew more grey, but that made the crack seem all the more dark. Oh, it was deep. The white sides of the pool were yielded up by the shattered tarpaulin, which had torn, had been rent asunder. The pool was splintered, utterly shattered and the great chasm sheared off into the garden and all that Janet had felt on stage was true. The crack had called out. Or maybe it was the garden or their home. Come home, come home, come home to bonnie Jean. And her face was still smeared with bonnie Jean and now it was wet with dew and with the tears of the new day. Her eyes overflowed. Her heart beat hard, and her arms ached with the effort of hugging her children to her. So hard she held them, so desperately hard that she squeezed a stifled Ow from little Pieter, who wriggled and writhed in his mother’s grasp –

  Close your eyes, she urged them. Oh, my little darlings, close your eyes. Think, she said, think –

  And she stared at the filthy crack growing darker and deeper in the softening sky. The heavens were mother-of-pearl; the crack was the gates of hell –

  Janet found it hard to think –

  For even as she frowned with the effort, the crack seemed to widen ever more. The skull of the pool trepanned and fell into deep, dark oblivion. Janet could not even whisper, Jean –

  For into the desperate crack fell all sense of old Jock. She knew his bones shifted in the heaving chest of the garden. And falling from her were all Noreen’s brave headaches and Eileen-the-Understudy’s little smiles. Into the crack, the chasm, went Phil and his stupid magazines and Hektor-Jan’s side of the bed. The splitting garden rang with the sound of Oupa’s eye tearing, exploding with a metal bang, and the shuddering kiss of her other half, Frank. Nesbitt howled, and Lettie-Alice’s radio lay weeping in the depths, its African voices ululating into the earth. Even as her arms ached with her children, in fell her stern mother for ever followed by her father. Only the red pen remained, but it was a hot pen-knife and it was now stuck to her hand. It was bloody with Hektor-Jan’s surprise and with Desperate Doug’s last wheeze. The entire garden was the mouth of Meneer Yuckulls, and he lay back and grinned at the new day, for it was coming and it was here, no matter what Derek-Francis did with his hands as he waved them goodbye. Oh God, called Janet as Karen Carpenter withered from sight, sucked into the void, and she now tried to reach past her children. But it was too late. She knew that New-Jock was gone, and so was Desperate Doug and Hektor-Jan. And the children were slipping. Just as the crack ran one way, it would stretch and come their way too. Of course, she should have seen that. They had made it out of the house. Yes, they were huddled at the back of the garden, but the tension was tearing the air; it would not be long before it came their way –

  Oh God, called Janet again and her arms found her children who were restless beneath her taut fear –

  Mommy, called the little boy, his voice trembling.

  I don’t like this, wailed the smallest child, Sylvia, whilst the eldest, Shelley, was silent and fierce.

  And her arms ached, and her throat throbbed as she tried to cling to her children. But the crack kept coming; there was nothing to be done. And even as the edge of the pool on their side split with a sigh, Janet’s waters finally broke. With a gasp, she felt the sudden warmth run down her thighs. There was the quick rush then the patter of heavy drops in the grim dawn –

  Oh God, Janet tried not to alarm the children for a third time. Oh Lettie-Alice and Solomon. How she needed her two stalwart fri
ends, her dear, dark mother and black father with their strong arms and brilliant smiles. They would know what to do. What could she do. Her hand rushed to her the depths of herself, to her split self. Yes, there was water. Yes, she had also begun to gape –

  What a world in which to be born. No high chaparral and little bonhomie. There were rhododendrons though and bald weeping willows. There was Benoni and the lost promise of Brigadoon, now gone for a hundred years. What would the next century see?

  And as Janet tried to clutch the children, and ride with the rupturing spasm of the new child to come, the crack gaped wider and deeper –

  So much had fallen into it, and yet now, from it, there came – what was coming?

  Mommy, their hands were desperate now. Their voices called to her, even Shelley’s, especially Shelley’s. Could they hear it too? Above their voices and beyond, or was it down, within the very depths of the land? That sound. It was coming. What rough beast, what was it that slouched, that came groaning up from the crack? Or were the real beasts in the garage?

  Oh God. The pain was welling up. Things were not falling into the crack; everything was coming out. Just as Janet gaped, the garden opened up, the land parted –

  Oh God, Janet did cry out this time. Oh, oh God. The pain was immense, far worse than she ever remembered and her children were aghast; they were holding on to her now. What was Mommy doing? Why was Mommy screaming? Why had Mommy fallen back? They were trying to help her. Quick, came Shelley’s voice fighting though Sylvia’s shrieks, quick. And there was Pieter, her own brave little Pieter, holding her in his arms like a lover. And they stroked Mommy’s forehead and tried to hold her as the sounds came bursting up and she screamed and held on to her belly, the base of herself –

  Ow, ow, ow, Janet cried like a child, as the crack tore and she gaped wider and wider. The spasms were moving fast, were becoming one long, wrenching orgasm of pain. All the truth was coming, but it was coming slant –

  Mommy, called Shelley. Mommy! Mommy!

  And as the garden finally split, as the huge chasm broke open their land, the children screamed and her baby crowned. They were sliding. The earth was trembling. They were falling. And even as they fell, Janet reached out, clutching at their warm bodies through the agony of it all –

  Mommy! they screamed. Mommy! she screamed. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!

  South Africa split with gunshots and cries and terror and fear.

  There was death and darkness and the shock of hard earth.

  Deep in the crack, it was a difficult birth.

  ‌‌Glossary

  ag: oh

  allawereld: an exclamation/expression of surprise

  asseblief: please

  assegai: spear

  baie: very/much

  blankes: whites

  bliksem: bastard

  blikskotteltjie: little rascal

  bobbejaan : baboon (bobbejaan spanner is a type of pipe wrench)

  boervrou: farmer’s wife

  boet: brother (but in the sense of mate/friend)

  brak: dog

  brandewijn: brandy

  broeks/broekie: knickers

  dank: thank

  dankie: thank you

  doek : headscarf

  dof: stupid

  dominee: a minister in an Afrikaner church

  doppie: a dram

  dorpsjapie: town dweller

  dwaal: a state of befuddlement

  egte: authentic

  eish: a multipurpose expression of exasperation or disbelief, it can also show excitement, anger or happiness

  ek is jammer: I am sorry

  Engelse: English

  Engelsman: Englishman

  fliek: movie

  gaan: go/going

  gee: give

  geen : none

  gelukkige verjaarsdag: happy birthday

  goeie: good

  groot: big

  haal: pull/get

  hemel: heaven

  Die Here: God

  heerlik: wonderful

  hierdie: this/these

  hierso: here

  hoekom: why

  hok: enclosure

  hom: him (or it)

  hy: he

  impi (in Zulu): armed group of men

  jislaaik: an expression of surprise

  jou: you

  jy: you

  kaffir: insult: a black person

  kak: shit

  kans: chance

  kaya: maid’s room, often in an outbuilding

  kerk: church

  Khoki: a stationery brand name

  klein: small

  kom: come

  koppie: small hill

  krag: courage/power

  laager: circular camp

  lekker: nice

  liewe: dear

  lobola (in Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele): dowry

  maak: make

  magtig: expression of surprise/exasperation

  mal: crazy

  mampara: idiot

  mampoer: homemade brandy

  mannetjie: little man

  meneer: mister or sir

  mes: knife

  mielie: maize

  moer: strong, all-purpose swear word

  my: me

  nie: not

  nie-blankes: non-whites

  nodig: needed

  ongeluk: accident

  oom : uncle

  oupa: grandfather

  paraat: ready

  panga: machete

  plaas brak: farm dog/mongrel

  reg: right

  regte: right/genuine

  riempe: leather thongs woven to make chair seats

  roepstem: a call/calling – also in the sense of ‘The Call’, the old national anthem

  rooinek: insult: an English-speaking South African (literally ‘red-neck’)

  sag: soft

  sê: say

  seker: sure

  sekerheid: certainty

  seun: son

  sis: yuck

  sjoe: an exclamation of surprise

  skoonsuster: sister-in-law

  skraal: thin/gaunt

  slaap: sleep

  slasto: a slate-like shale used for flooring and tiling

  snaaks: amusing/odd

  sommer: just because/for no real reason

  songololo: millipede

  stap: walk

  swarte: black person

  takkies: plimsolls

  tannie: auntie (a term of respect)

  tarentaal: guinea fowl

  terug: back

  velskoene: walking shoes

  verjaar: celebrate a birthday

  vlei: shallow pool/lake

  voetsek: get lost

  vreet: feed

  vrou: wife

  wat: what

  weet: know

  witblits: home-distilled grape brandy

  wragtig: truly/really

  ‌Acknowledgements

  I am grateful for the permission to reproduce extracts from the following works:

  John Marais, Time Bomb: A Policeman’s True Story. Reprinted with the permission of Tafelberg.

  Weizmann Hamilton writing in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi (Fortress of the Revolution)

  Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, The Road to Democracy in South Africa: 1970 – 1980, Volume 2. Reprinted with the permission of UNISA Press.

  Frank Welsh, A History of South Africa. Reprinted with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. Reprinted (hardback and paperback) with the permission of Little, Brown Book Group; reprinted (digitally) with the permission of Hachette Book Group, inc.

  I would like to thank first readers, Lesley Radmann, Betty Marais, Glenda and Helmut Radmann, Andrew Murray and Astrid Coetzer (who also helped with some of the Afrikaans phrasing), my agent, Juliet Mushens, editors Jenny Parrott, Charlotte Van Wijk and Juliet Mabey, copy editor, Kate Quarry, editorial production manager, Ruth Deary, Lord Wandsworth College creative writing pupils, Sophia Agathocleous, Ricky Bevin
s, Beth Harris and Harry Puttock, colleague, Ed Coetzer, and Chris and Jenny Parker, whose kindness has made so many things possible.

  ‌About the Author

  Christopher Radmann is from South Africa but has lived in England for the last fourteen years. He is Head of Sixth Form and Head of English at a boarding school in Hampshire, England, where he lives with his wife and two children. The Crack is his second novel, following his acclaimed debut, Held Up.

  A Oneworld Book

  This e-book edition published by Oneworld Publications, 2014

  First published in North America, Great Britain & Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2014

  Copyright © Christopher Radmann 2014

  The moral right of Christopher Radmann to be identified as the Author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-78074-528-2 (Hardback)

  ISBN: 978-1-78074-399-8 (Paperback)

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-78074-427-8

  Cover design by Katya Mezhibovskaya

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eBook by Tetragon Publishing

  Oneworld Publications

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  England