The Smell of Apples: A Novel
Page 16
Mark Behr
But the best place for fishing is Botswana. Dad says he'll take me there once I get to high school. Every October, Dad and Brigadier Van der Westhuizen go up to the Okovango swamps to do tiger-fishing. Dad wanted to take me along with him once, but Mum said I was still too small. I begged and begged to go with Dad, but Mum put her foot down and said my nagging was 'an exercise in futility'. If I got sick up there in the bushes there wouldn't be anyone to look after me or any doctor to give me medicine. So my big dream is still to go tiger-fishing with Dad in the Okovango. Usually, Dad and Brigadier Van der Westhuizen take an army vehicle when they go up to Botswana. They replace the army number plates with ordinary ones, because R-vehicles make the Botswana government all edgy. Botswana's government is just like the rest of Africa; their president married a white woman and she had coloured kids who can't fit in anywhere.
'It's those poor kids I feel sorriest for,' Mum says, whenever people speak about Lady Ruth Khama and Sir Seretse. Overseas, where they have television, Dad once saw a programme about Sir Seretse. Dad says that Sir Seretse is so black he actually looks blue. When the Queen of England saw the blue glint on his skin, she mistook it for blue blood, and she summarily made him a Sir!
'But,' says Dad, 'even when a monkey wears a golden ring . . .' And without him even having to finish the sentence we know what he means. At times, Dad only has to start a sentence and we already know what he would have said. Dad always says a quick mind requires only half an explanation, and that's why it's never been necessary for him to give us hidings.
When we get home, Mum puts out some cold chicken and salad for lunch. But before we eat, she sends us down to the shop to buy bread. We take off our school uniforms
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for the last time this year and walk down St James Road to the shop. From the leftover change we buy ourselves a Crunchie each and we share a small bottle of cream-soda. We sit down on the pavement outside the shop to finish the Crunchies. If we arrive home with sweets, Mum will say we aren't going to eat our food.
I'm glad Frikkie's here, because I don't feel like playing with the Spiros. I'm still angry at them for running off yesterday when I fell down Mrs Streicher's steps.
But that's exactly what the English are like. They always run away. Dad says it's the Afrikaners that will have to keep this country safe when trouble comes. The English will all emigrate in droves, and run off to America and England because half of them have foreign passports. After the Anglo-Boer war, all the English soldiers left South Africa without even thinking about the thousands of women and children they had murdered in the concentration camps. Poor Ouma Kimberley was born in the concentration camps. Dad says it's typical of the British to criticise Hitler, when they themselves were actually the ones who started putting people into camps. Once, when we were driving past Rhodes Memorial, Dad said Cecil John Rhodes had been an imperialist who stripped our country of gold and diamonds. And when he died after ruining our country, he had his ashes strewn in Rhodesia rather than in this country he had milked dry. Dad said the Rhodes Memorial should rather be named after someone like Verwoerd, who had given his life in service to the Republic.
We see the old man walking towards us from the direction of Kalk Bay. He bends forward, and picks up an empty Coke bottle from the water drain. At first we don't pay him any attention, but then I recognise him: it's Chrisjan. It's the first time I've seen him since he walked off with our
Mark Behr
fishing gear. He's wandering along with his eyes on the pavement, and it seems like he's looking for something.
'Dag, Chrisjan,' I say, from where Frikkie and I are sitting on the pavement. He comes to a sudden standstill, and tries to straighten his shoulders.
'Afternoon, my Crown. Doesn't the Crown have a little loose something for an old man? The hunger's eating at the stomach.'
He's acting as if he doesn't recognise me. But he has to know me. After all, he worked in our garden for thirty years, first for Oupa and then for us. He bends forward, holding out his palm like a bergie. Dad usually gives them money, but I haven't got any for him. And anyway, Chrisjan isn't a bergie, he's simply unreliable and on top of that he's a thief.
'Stop pretending you don't know who I am. Dad's going to send the police to come and lock you up. They'll take you to Robben Island to chop rocks. That's what you'll get for stealing our fishing reels.' That isn't really true, because Dad never wanted to call the police. He said we weren't one hundred per cent sure that Chrisjan was the one who had stolen the reels. But all the same, we knew it was him, so I just want to frighten him a bit. When I start talking about the police, his eyes open wide and he denies that he knows anything about the reels. It's just like the Coloureds to act all stupid whenever it suits them.
'Chrisjan!' I say. 'Don't you know who I am any more?'
'Hasn't the baas got a little loose something—'
'Who am IV I shout at him, getting all irritated. I tell Frikkie we should go home. We get up to leave.
'I'm looking for empties, my Crown,' he says, eyeing the half-empty bottle of cream-soda I'm holding in my hand.
'Well, first tell me who I am. Then you can have the bottle and go get the deposit for it.'
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He's almost kneeling now, and Frikkie chips in and says he should behave himself like a Coloured even though he is a Kaffir. But Chrisjan is a Coloured, his skin is just a bit darker than most of the others. If Frikkie and I have an argument with someone at school, Frikkie sometimes says: behave yourself like a white, even though you're a Kaffir.
'So,' I ask, 'are you going to tell me my name?'
He pulls his face until it's covered in even more wrinkles, and holds out his hands again: 'I am Chrisjan, my Crown.'
We burst out laughing, and I put my hands to my sides with the cream-soda bottle resting against my hip: 'Not your name, baboon! Tell me what my name is, then I'll give you the bottle.'
He shuffles about in front of us, and looks up and down the street. I start walking as if I'm going to leave without giving him the bottle. As I pass, he takes me by the arm and starts begging again: 'Please . . .' But I pull away from him, and in the same movement I knock the empty from his hand. It bursts into splinters across the pavement. I didn't do it on purpose.
'Oh Jesus, Basie, what now? I'm sorry baas, I'm sorry . . .'he says, and bends to pick up the pieces.
'Leave the glass, Chrisjan. It doesn't mean anything now . . . it's no use. Here . . .' and I hold out the small cream-soda bottle. There are still a few sips of green cool-drink left at the bottom.
'You can have it,' I say, and he takes it from my hand, saying thank you, over and over again.
While we're walking home, I start feeling sorry for him. I can't believe how he's changed since he left. His face has gone wrinkled like an old raisin and the long strands of beard on his chin have turned completely grey. He looks like someone who already has one leg in the grave. I feel
Mark Behr
bad because he would have gotten a bigger deposit for the litre bottle than for the small cream-soda.
Before we turn up St James road, I quickly turn to look back at him. He's already on the other side of Main Road, moving up along the railway tracks. He comes to a standstill and throws his head back, and with one gulp he downs the last bit of cream-soda that was left in the bottle.
Frikkie asks whether I found out how the General got his scar. I answer that I haven't asked him, and I warn Frikkie not to call him 'the General'. It's Mister Smith. I tell him that the General is half-Spaniard and half-Indian.
'But then he's a Coloured!' Frikkie cries out. 'I thought he was as dark as anything.'
'You're mad!' I answer. 'You have to have real black blood in you to be a Coloured.'
'Well! What do you think the Indians are?'
'I don't know, but they're not black. And anyway, you're not meant to know about it.'
With us being blood-brothers and
all, I wonder whether I should tell him about last night - when I saw the reflection in the mirror. But maybe it was all a dream and none of it really happened. I'm sure you're not meant to tell your blood-brother about dreams.
Behind me the bush is alive. Voices are shouting, but they We drowned by the noise in my head. I wind my way up the river, knowing already that I cannot keep going. At any moment now they 11 be around me, cornering me against the water like an animal with no escape. Only into their arms: the arms of Fidel's sons, who have awaited me so long.
In the distance I can suddenly see the dam! Qalueque is right in front of me. Someone should be there already,
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waiting for me. I want to shout, to call for help, to ask for cover from them. Again and again I try to force a cry from my throat. From the corner of my eye I catch the movement of someone almost next to me. I cannot look away from my path, I try to scream, hut no sound leaves my throat. Now, so close, and the dam seems to be clouding over with mist. Everything is turning white. Voices in languages often heard but never understood. As I stumble and fall forward, I hear the sound of boots coming to a halt in the dust, right beside my head.
At supper Use speaks to the General as if nothing happened last night, and now I'm sure I dreamed it all. Mum tells us that Doreen called again late this afternoon. Little-Neville's getting transferred to Groote Schuur tomorrow, and Mum told Doreen that Dad will pay the ambulance for now.
When we've finished eating, we all go through to the lounge, and Dad tells me to fetch the slide projector from his study. He's taking Mister Smith over to Brigadier Van der Westhuizen's house later, but before he leaves Dad wants to show him slides of Tanganyika and the war in Rhodesia. Dad was mostly in the front lines during the war, so he couldn't take many photographs. Sometimes he just asked his orderly to take some shots when things were less dangerous. But taking photographs in a war is really a luxury. Mostly you only do it when you have time or when something happens that you really want to remember.
'Not that you could ever forget things that happen in war,' says Dad. 'Every atrocity committed by those guerillas is imprinted on your brain, just like the faces of your wife and children on the photographs you carry in your inside pocket.'
Mark Behr
Use fetches a bottle of liqueur from the cabinet, and the grown-ups drink from Mum's tiny crystal glasses with the engraved grapes. We drink Appletiser, because Mum doesn't allow Coke and Fanta into our house. She says gas cool-drink contains all kinds of colorants and things that eat away the lining of your stomach. The Delports always have Coke and other cool-drinks in their fridge. Because I like Coke and cream-soda so much, I never say a word about the lining of the stomach - not when I'm visiting there.
Mum and Use are sitting on the couch, and Frikkie and I on the carpet in front of them. Dad and the General are sitting on the Lazyboys. The projector is next to Dad, and its little feet are resting on two of Mum's thick Bach and Scarlatti sheet-music books. Dad has taken down the big False Bay oil painting from the wall where he's going to show the slides. Mum explains to the General that the bay is called False Bay because in the olden days the sailors coming back from the East Indies always mistook it for Table Bay. Dad laughs and says the old sailors were a stupid lot. How it's possible to mistake Hangklip or the Hottentots-Holland for Table Mountain he can't imagine! He says the Dutch were really a strange lot. At one stage they even wanted to dig a canal from False Bay across the Cape Flats into Table Bay. Later they gave up on the idea, because it would have taken too much work. But anyway, where have you ever heard of someone coming to dig canals in the middle of Africa! Did they think this was still Amsterdam, or what? But the Dutch soon learned that Africa is a different ballgame altogether.
The General asks why the mountains are called Hottentots-Holland. Mum tells him that the Hottentots used to live in the mountains and when Jan Van Riebeeck came to the Cape, he said those mountains are the Holland of the Hottentots.
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Dad says I can turn out the lights.
The first lot are of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam. There are slides of Oupa's hotel and the white beaches with all the palm trees. There are some of black children carrying huge baskets full of coconuts and bananas on their heads. There's a nice slide of Dad and Oupa Erasmus standing next to Oupa's Daimler Benz. When Dad says that it's him when he was seven, the General says it could just as well have been me, and Dad winks at me through the half-dark. I'm glad I'm going to look like Dad one day.
Lots of slides are of Kilimanjaro and Meru. Some were taken from an aeroplane, so you can see right into the craters at the top. The craters are covered with snow and the sun is reflected like rainbows against the camera lens. Dad says that Mount Meru, which bordered one of Uncle Samuel's farms, used to be even higher than Kilimanjaro. But because it was a volcano, it blew its top off many millions of years ago. Now the volcanoes are dead.
'Imagine how that lot would panic if it erupted today,' the General says, and we all laugh.
'Could solve the problems of over-population,' Dad answers.
The General says there are still live volcanoes in Chile. In the south of the country there are huge snow-covered volcanoes, and if you go to the top, you can look down into the boiling lava in the craters far below you.
'And don't think you are the only ones with overpopulation!' he says. 'Chile has one of the highest population growth-rates in the world - and our volcanoes are not helping to solve the problem.' And the grown-ups laugh.
Then there are slides of the Serengeti and of the Ngorogoro Crater, and of thousands of wildebeest and zebra crossing the plains in huge herds. Then there's a
Mark Behr
series of slides with Oupa standing between hundreds of elephant tusks, most of them stretching above his head. The General whistles through his lips and says it's impossible.
From his seat in the dark, Dad points to the two big tusks on either side of the fireplace: 'That pair belonged to my father.' Dad always says the tusks are the only thing he's really sentimental about.
On the next slide Oupa is standing with his foot against an elephant bull he shot. In the background the Ndorobos are already chopping out the tusks. The bull's intestines are bubbling out of its stomach across the ground like big red and pink balloons.
Among the slides there are also some that belong to Uncle Samuel. One is of a group of people standing around John Wayne when he came to Tanganyika to make a movie. On the slide everyone is smiling and looking very happy. Tannie Betta is holding a small puppy and John Wayne, wearing khaki clothes, has his arms around her and Sanna Koerant's shoulders. Old Sanna's having a good laugh about it all, and you can just see teeth. Mum says the movie was also shown in South Africa. She says the music was written by Henri Mancini, and the theme tune was the famous 'Baby Elephant Walk'. The film was called Hatari, which means 'danger' in Swahili.
Dad tells me to turn on the lights, and the General says:
'It seems like heaven. How can you ever forget it?'
'It was heaven,' Dad answers. 'Once you've seen Kilimanjaro, you never forget.'
When Dad's ready, I turn the light off and lie down on the carpet next to Frikkie. Dad says they can't stay much longer, because they have to leave soon for their meeting. I'm also starting to get tired, but we still want to see the slides of Rhodesia.
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I look at the General's face. In the projector's dim light he looks a bit like Dad. It's a pity he's leaving tonight. He was going to come fishing with us and I wanted to hear more about Chile.
The first Rhodesia slides are of Dad standing in a sandpit, giving orders to his officers. Then there are some of troops doing patrols. They're carrying rifles and mortars slung across their shoulders. Dad was still a colonel when he was in Rhodesia, but on the slides he's not wearing his epaulettes. Officers don't wear their ranks in battle, because if they do the enemy would target them specifically. Dad says it's
not necessary to wear your rank during battle anyway, because when you fight, all soldiers are equal: your aim is to win - whether you're a troop or a colonel. Besides, if you're worth your salt as a leader, all the troops automatically know that you're the leader.
'These were taken just north of Wankie. We got these Ters after walking in forty degrees for five days.' The slide shows four naked terrorists standing in a clearing. Their hands are tied above their heads and a soldier's holding a bayonet against the one's chest. You can see the white of his eyes in his black face. It could be that he's crying, because his face is pulled like he's screaming. Use gets up and says she's going to make coffee.
'These Ters are all the same,' Dad says, and holds the slide for a while without moving on. 'Once you catch them, they turn into real cowards . . . they quickly call you Boss again. They forget their Moscow training at the drop of a hat,' and Dad clicks his fingers.
Now the four terrorists are lying in a heap and you can see they've been shot. Their bodies are covered in blood. The one who was standing in the front on the previous slide has his legs stretched open towards the camera and his black thing hangs almost to the ground.
Mark Behr
'This is detente,' Dad says. It's a soldier holding up a black arm with pink meat hanging out where it was cut from the body. I cover my eyes, because I don't want to look at it. I peep through my fingers to see whether Frikkie's watching, but it looks like he's asleep. I don't know what 'detente' is, but Dad says Uncle John Vorster is going to do a good job of calling the world's bluff, by acting all lovey-dovey with the blacks.