When Time Fails

by Marilyn Cohen de Villiers

  She sank down on the bed, curled up, wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes.

  ‘You’re back.’

  She opened her eyes, stared at Thys and closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to talk to him. She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what Mr Venter said?’

  She kept her eyes closed.

  ‘He said he had also just been informed about the withdrawal of the case. He said it seemed like it was all over... but he was cautious. Apparently there is some talk that the law may be changed. There’s a rumour that the ANC is going to extend the cut-off for land claims to past 1998 because apparently there are still a lot of people who want to claim and haven’t been able to. Which is a joke, if you think of it. They haven’t even been able to process the claims they do have. But Mr Venter said that could be why the claim was withdrawn – so that they wouldn’t lose in the Constitutional Court and then they could resubmit a new claim...Annamari, are you listening?’

  ‘I can’t think about that now. I really can’t.’

  She tucked her chin into her chest and hugged herself tighter. She just wanted him to go away. She wanted everyone to go away. She wanted time to reverse, to go back to before... before everything.

  She could sense Thys standing silently, looking down at her. She heard him draw in a deep breath. She knew he was going to say something. She didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘We cannot pretend anymore. We have to discuss ... before they get back... come on, liefie. Please. Come with me. I want to show you something.’

  Her heart bounced. He’d called her liefie.

  She dragged herself into a sitting position, hauled her feet off the bed and planted them on the floor.

  Thys sat down next to her. ‘Annamari, liefie... we have to tell Arno and Aviva.’

  She shuddered. ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why can’t we just leave things as they are?’

  He shook his head. ‘Things aren’t the same. You know that. And Arno has a right to know.’

  ‘Why? It’s just going to upset him. There’s no need to tell him.’ She looked at him hopefully.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time we stopped all the lying, all the pretence? For us. It’s about time we were honest with each other. And with Arno... and everyone.’

  ‘But it’s going to break his heart. It will destroy him if he can’t marry... her. He’s obviously crazy about her. He went all the way to Israel to propose to her...’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Thys looked at her sharply.

  Annamari mentally kicked herself. Slowly, reluctantly, she told him about the call from Tracy Jacobs. ‘I didn’t know what to do, so I just put the phone down on her.’

  Thys looked grim. ‘All the more reason for us to stop the lies. To tell the truth, the whole truth, for once in our lives.’

  ***

  Arno and Aviva bubbled into the lounge, flushed, smiling and sweaty after their day in the sun. Annamari swallowed. She felt sick. The vague headache she had been fighting all day was threatening to turn into a full blown migraine. She wondered if she could plead illness and escape to the bedroom, emerging only after Thys had told them.

  But Thys had insisted that she had to be the one who should break the news. It was, after all, her secret, her story. Her sin.

  ‘We’re just going to have a nice long glass of orange juice, with lots of ice and then we’ll go shower,’ Arno said, disappearing into the kitchen.

  Aviva sat on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in her lap. Annamari tried to examine her objectively. She could see why Arno had fallen for her. She really was very pretty – big brown eyes, thick brown hair, cut to just below her chin with just a hint of a curl, a nice straight nose – Annamari caught her breath. Alan’s nose and his wide mouth and perfect teeth...

  ‘So do you approve, Ma? She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?’ Arno said, plonking himself down on the couch next to the girl and taking her hand.

  Annamari flushed. She hadn’t realised she was staring. She looked beseechingly at Thys. He nodded.

  ‘Arno. Your mother has something to tell you,’ he said.

  Chapter 48

  2014

  Arno and Aviva looked at her curiously. Annamari prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her.

  ‘Sounds serious,’ Arno said. ‘You both look pretty grim. What’s up? Is it about Steynspruit?’

  Annamari shook her head. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She cleared her throat, tried to remember the words she had rehearsed, over and over in her head. Nothing. She started again.

  ‘I don’t quite know where to start. This is very difficult. What I’m about to tell you... well, I’m not sure Aviva should be here...’

  ‘We don’t need to have any secrets from Avi. We’re all going to be family,’ Arno said.

  Annamari took a deep breath. She started speaking. She couldn’t look at Arno. She couldn’t look at Thys. She wanted to die. She ploughed on. She made no excuses. She had no excuses. She had been incredibly stupid. She had fallen pregnant. And then she had lied to Thys – to everyone – for years. She was so sorry, so very, very sorry.

  She forced herself to look at Arno. He was deathly pale.

  ‘So you’re telling me that Pa isn’t my father? Is that what you are saying?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Pa, did you know?’

  Annamari held her breath. What would Thys say?

  ‘Yes,’ Thys said. ‘I knew.’

  ‘You married her knowing she was pregnant with someone else’s child – and then you lied about it?’

  Annamari cringed at the contempt in Arno’s voice.

  ‘No, I didn’t know then. I found out later. When you were – older.’

  ‘How much older? How did you find out? Did... did she tell you?’

  Annamari flinched. The way he had spat out that “she” – it was like a knife piercing her heart.

  Thys shook his head. ‘I just knew.’

  ‘And what did you do? What did she say when you confronted her? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  There it was – that “she” again. Annamari shuddered.

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything. I prayed that your mother would ... I don’t know: I prayed that the Lord would give her the strength to ... to tell me.’

  ‘And you didn’t say anything to me? Didn’t you think I deserved to know?’

  ‘I didn’t know what effect it would have on you,’ Thys said, then shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. I was scared. I didn’t want to risk ... I don’t know... I wanted things to stay as they were. I loved your mother. I loved you. I couldn’t risk losing you. I hated knowing, and I hated having to keep it a secret. But to risk losing your mother, to risk losing you... I couldn’t do it. I’m so sorry, son. I’m so sorry.’

  Arno stood up, his fists clenched. ‘Don’t ... don’t ... I’m not your son. How could you pretend, how could you lie? All these years, you pretended that I was your son. How could you?’

  ‘Because you are. You are my son. You always will be. You have been my son from the day you were born. Nothing can ever change that.’

  Arno turned to Annamari. She was dying inside but managed to meet her son’s furious eyes.

  ‘So, if I have the story right, you trapped Pa into marriage, you lied to him about me, you acted like a cheap...’

  ‘I... I... it wasn’t....’ Annamari spread her arms wide. She didn’t know what to say.

  Thys interrupted. ‘Enough, Arno! Don’t speak to your mother like that. No matter what she did when she was a young girl, she is still your mother. She has always been a wonderful mother to you. You cannot deny that. And she’s my wife. She never trapped me into doing anything I didn’t want to do. I was always going to marry her. Our wedding day was the happiest day of my life. It just came a little earlier than I had planned, but I’ve never regretted it, not for a moment.’

 
Thys got up and came over to Annamari’s chair. He put his arm around her. ‘I cannot remember a time when I didn’t love your mother, Arno. Yes, I was angry when I realised what she had done, but I got over it because I loved her, and I loved you, and nothing was going to change that. Nothing will change that. Ever.’

  Annamari fumbled in her pocket for a tissue to blow her streaming nose.

  ‘You have to forgive her, son. You have to forgive us. Please, listen to me,’ Thys said.

  ‘I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my father.’ Arno fired a dagger of sheer contempt at them and strode out of the room.

  Aviva scrambled after him. She stopped at the door, gave them a look of deep compassion and said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll speak to him. He’ll come around. He loves you.’

  ***

  The sun went away. Annamari sat on the stoep listening to the silence of the night. It was pitch dark, the moon and the stars hiding their glow behind invisible clouds. She reached for her coffee. Sipped. Grimaced. It was cold. She sipped again. The wind gusted across the stoep. She shivered. The temperature dropped. A vicious streak of lightning split the sky, giving her a momentary glimpse of the remaining poplars. She jumped when the thunder followed. She sipped again. The heavens wept. Still she sat, ignoring the spray lashing at her from the broken gutter.

  ‘Annamari, come in. You’ll get sick sitting out there in the cold,’ Thys called softly from the French doors.

  She ignored him. She didn’t care if she did get sick. She deserved to be sick. She deserved to suffer as she had made Arno suffer; as she had made Thys suffer.

  ‘Liefie, come on. De Wet is going to be skyping us soon. You know how excited he is about the whole India tournament. Come inside now.’

  De Wet. And Steyn. She’d have to tell them. She sipped her cold coffee again. She hauled herself to her feet and walked into the house, into the kitchen, poured the remains of her coffee into the sink. Then she walked, down the passage, past Arno’s closed bedroom door, into the study to confront her younger son on the other side of the world.

  De Wet’s skype call came through. His face shattered into a Picasso portrait; his voice a staccato jumble of words. And then nothing. There was a message on the computer monitor about contact with the network being lost. Thys tried connecting through the 3G but that didn’t work either. Annamari sent up a prayer of thanks for the bad weather. It gave them time to ... to what? De Wet would still have to be told. Thys sent De Wet a text message about the storm and a time to skype the next day.

  ***

  Annamari and Thys sat in the lounge, looking at the silent, blank television. The storm had probably knocked out their DSTV satellite television reception as well. It didn’t matter. They hadn’t bothered to turn the television on. Thys held her lifeless hand. He squeezed it gently. The storm continued to rage outside. Hail clattered on the roof, making conversation difficult. It didn’t matter either. There was nothing to say. Not yet.

  They waited.

  Thys got up and went to the kitchen. He returned with two mugs of steaming coffee. He put the mugs down on the coffee table in front of her.

  ‘We haven’t had supper,’ Thys said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Are you hungry? Can I get you something? A sandwich?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  Thys sat down. He picked up his mug, blew on it, sipped. Put the mug down. She watched him. She looked back at the lifeless television.

  They waited.

  The hail stopped. The storm died. The silence was deafening.

  Arno appeared in the doorway. Aviva was next to him, holding his arm.

  ‘I have one more question,’ he said. ‘Who is my father? My biological father?’

  Chapter 49

  2014

  Time stuttered.

  This was it. The moment she had been dreading since...always. And now it had arrived. She had never thought about how she would tell Arno. She wondered fleetingly why she had never thought about it, rehearsed it, found a way to break it to him gently.

  ‘Alan Silverman,’ she blurted.

  Time stopped.

  Arno blanched. Aviva looked confused, then shook her head wildly.

  ‘What?’ Arno whispered. ‘Are you crazy? That’s sick! How can you say that?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry,’ Annamari said.

  Arno turned to Thys. ‘Pa, she’s lying, isn’t she? Tell me she’s lying.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Thys said. Then added, slowly, so there could be no misunderstanding: ‘Alan Silverman is your biological father.’

  ***

  Later, lying in bed, unable to sleep, Annamari found she was unable to recall the details of the dreadful scene that followed. There had been shouting, and crying, and accusations.

  She remembered Arno shouting: ‘Did Alan Silverman know? Did he know about me?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so,’ Thys had said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he did,’ she had answered.

  And then... then, or was it later? She’d had to tell Thys, and Arno, even Aviva who had wiped away her tears and was sitting as far from Arno as she could on the couch. She’d told them about that humiliating scene with Alan. The one which had haunted her for years, which she’d tried to forget. About the time she had gone to tell him she was pregnant and he had said he wouldn’t marry her; and she had said that she would never, ever have married him.

  ‘Why did he never say anything to me?’ Arno’s anguish was plain.

  ‘He was incredibly proud of you,’ Aviva said quietly. ‘I don’t think he ever really loved anyone in his life – apart from my mother. But he was proud of you. He always compared you to Yair. He told Yair to be more like you. I did too...Oh my god, I never knew...I never thought... what is wrong with me?’

  Annamari watched helplessly as Aviva doubled over and sobbed, her terrible grief shaking her slight body. Arno started to reach for her, then stopped, pain and confusion twisting his face into a grotesque mask.

  Silence stretched into hours. Then Arno said the words she had been dreading: ‘Now what?’

  Annamari shook her head. But she knew. It was over. Her son’s heart was broken, again, and it was all her fault. And Aviva – that poor, poor girl, after everything she had been through.

  Aviva, curled into foetal ball on the edge of the couch, hugged her knees even tighter, and answered Arno’s anguished question. She whispered: ‘Nothing. It’s over. It’s all over.’

  ‘No,’ said Thys.

  Annamari stared at him, shocked.

  ‘Let’s not make hasty decisions here,’ Thys said. ‘Let’s... there are ... let’s think about this.’

  What was there to think about? There was nothing to think about. It was wrong. There were laws. Arno and Aviva could go to prison. They were finished. They were sinners. Iniquitous sinners. Thys had said so.

  Thys said: ‘Listen, the decision is yours, Arno – yours and Aviva’s. Don’t do anything rash. Don’t do anything stupid. Think about it. Think about why you think... why you and Aviva shouldn’t, can’t be together.’

  ‘Because she’s my... my sister. Oh my god. She’s my sister.’ Fresh tears streamed down Arno’s white face. He brushed at them angrily and glared at Thys. ‘What else is there?’

  ***

  Annamari opened her eyes. She must have finally fallen asleep. Thys wasn’t in bed. Through the crack in the curtains the sky was starting to lighten. Morning was coming. A new day. She turned over and buried her head in her pillow. So what if it was a new day? Nothing had changed. Nothing could change. A few metres away, in De Wet’s old room, she could picture Arno battling his pain, tormented by Aviva’s distraught face as she closed the door of his bedroom behind her. And turned the key.

  She turned over again. Closed her eyes. Tried to take long, slow, sleep-inducing breaths. Started counting sheep... again. Stupid, stupid old wives’ tale. It had never worked before. What made her think it would w
ork now? She flung the duvet back. She needed fresh air.

  Hugging her dressing gown around her, she made her way down the passage. The doors to Arno’s room and De Wet’s room were closed. She listened closely as she walked past. Nothing. Thys was in the study, playing on the computer. ‘Do you want some coffee?’ she asked. He shook his head.

  She settled down in one of the rickety chairs on the stoep and looked out towards the Malutis just as the sun peeked over the top. She looked away... and stopped. Stared. Tears gathered. She blinked and looked again. There were only two poplars there. Another must have been blown down in last night’s storm. Soon, there wouldn’t be any left.

  The sun crept higher in the clear blue sky. It was going to be another beautiful day. It was going to be a dreadful day.

  Thys sat down heavily in the chair opposite hers. He rubbed his hand across his bloodshot eyes.

  ‘I’ve been reading. On the internet,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Have you ever heard of genetic sexual attraction?’

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to hear what he had found. He was like Thabo Mbeki. Always surfing the internet looking for answers to things there were no answers to. Mbeki thought he had found the answer to Aids and people said hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people had died because of what he thought he had learned on the internet.

  ‘It’s apparently a well-documented phenomenon,’ Thys continued. ‘It’s an attraction between close blood relatives – siblings usually– who have not grown up together; who may not even know of each other’s existence. Then they meet as adults, are immediately attracted to each other and fall in love. Most don’t ever find out they are siblings. There are quite a few reported cases but there are probably a lot more.’