by Trevor Sacks
Yellow and brown rolled in the bucket of his mouth while he chewed, and then as he spoke, the dollop just lay there naked and wet. I looked at Ma, but she was only smiling at the man’s mindless anecdotes.
Here was Leo Fein, accomplice, with a store of knowledge about my father, circling my mother like one of his own stuffed buzzards. No, he hadn’t used me to get to her, but he may as well have, as betrayed as I felt. It was a bad lucky packet I’d opened at Meyer Levinson’s braai, an unlucky packet.
As soon as I was done, I asked to be excused. It was the privilege of still being a boy: to remove yourself from company when it no longer interested you. I found refuge between the covers of the Encyclopedia Americana. I took to my seat within the safety of facts. I lost myself in the centre of a furious storm of information; I opened a volume and closed out the world, or rather, entered another, a mirror world one step removed from the real one but containing everything in it.
Those hardback volumes began in me the love of knowledge for its own sake. A subject would catch onto me, and there were days when I’d have eight or nine books spread out on the floor with their wings overlapping as I traced a path from one to the next.
I have my mother to thank, or curse, for this. She set the tone in our family for regarding intellect as the highest virtue. We pitied simple but good people, churchgoers for instance. ‘Shame,’ we said, ‘they mean so well but do they really think we came from Adam and Eve?’
My great rebellion was the reclaiming of religion for myself and this wouldn’t have sat well with my mother or brothers had I been brave enough to share my beliefs with them. While the Encyclopedia Americana was even-handed in its entries for Evolution and Genesis, in my mother’s canon Einstein ranked higher than Gandhi, and Darwin was exalted above all.
I lifted off at the entry for Maya and it could have ended anywhere at all. Maya led to Inca which led to Aztec which led to Cheyenne. Cheyenne to Sun Dance, Sun Dance to Iroquois, Iroquois to Mohawk, Mohawk to Empire State Building, Empire State Building to Steel. Steel to Broadsword to Vikings to Runes to Druids to Stonehenge to Sun to Hydrogen, and Hydrogen to Quantum Mechanics to Einstein to Violin to Standard Pitch to Well Temperament.
And so I journeyed through the night.
* * *
I was desperate to talk to someone about Leo Fein’s visit, but we hardly heard from Elliot any more. Ma tried to extract any news about Elliot from Will, but Will’s animosity coloured his reporting. He’d hint that Elliot was skipping class, denigrate his education, feign outrage at his smoking and his earrings, and call his friends cockroaches.
‘They’re artists, Will,’ Ma would say. ‘And before you say anything funny, I went to art college, you know.’
But it was far from clear whether Elliot was in fact attending school. He’d tell Ma he was going to Will’s for the weekend only for Ma to discover that he’d told Will he was going home.
I missed Elliot. The harsh light of his judgement burned and blinded and left me feeling weak, but deep down I knew he was an ally. When I finally spoke to him, telling him about Leo Fein, he seemed tickled by the idea.
‘Didn’t Will tell you anything?’ I asked.
‘We don’t talk now.’
‘Well, Ma’s seeing a lot of him.’
‘Listen, don’t worry. Ma’s a grown woman. She knows what she’s doing. Actually, it’s her life, so don’t interfere. Is she happy?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what does she seem like?’
‘She’s out all the time. And she got out her pottery stuff the other day.’
‘Well, she sounds happy to me. So just hang back. If Ma’s with him, he can’t be that bad.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Serious, Ben. Don’t fuck it up for her.’
‘What do you think I’m gonna do?’
‘Nothing. And what about you?’
‘What?’
‘Taking someone on the Standard Five Tour?’
‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’
8
BLOOD RIVER
My mother filled my suitcase with the requirements from the school checklist and Carol arrived in the rust-bitten brown Colt. We were already running late, but Ma insisted on taking a photograph of Shoshana and me at the car.
I caught myself shaking my head repeatedly on the drive to school where the buses were waiting for us. There was no escaping now.
At least we’d be travelling separately. Mr Coetzee would be on the boys’ bus and Mrs Verwey, a much more frightening prospect, was on the girls’. I wouldn’t have to sit next to Potato Latke and I wouldn’t have to see Brian and Georgina sitting together, either.
Shoshana and I parted without saying a word. Most of my friends had already picked seats, and the best I could do to be near them was to sit next to Barry. While Mr Coetzee smoked a Gunston next to the bus, Mrs Verwey was already arranging everyone’s seating and striding up and down, her stark wooden crucifix colliding with her breastbone. It was a cross that eschewed fancy ornamentation or even bevelling, and had to have been constructed by Mr Verwey, a keen hobbyist woodworker, the same Guidance teacher who had made Elliot sign his military registration papers.
I watched Georgina arrive and Brian help her with her bag. She gave him a shy wave and stepped onto the girls’ bus. Heavy drops of longing fell inside me; envy spread like venom. It would have been better to ride out the tour alone than be tied to anyone but Georgina. I felt sorry for myself and began to wish I’d stayed at home; but home was worse, with Leo Fein skulking around my mother.
The bus started up and we moved along the street, just beneath the jacaranda blossoms, away from the school. There were claps and whistles as we passed the town’s ‘welcome’ sign, brutal concrete cross-slabs in the dirt at the municipal border. The town and, I feared, my mother were Leo Fein’s now.
We rode into the yellow bushveld that lay between settlements, the flat ground stretching up occasionally to the skirts of protruding hills, rising like stud rivets from the veld. Barry already had his exercise book out.
Mr Coetzee told us about Nylstroom, the town we were passing, and the story of the pious Jerusalemgangers, who searched for the Promised Land to the north. With only the hand-drawn map at the back of a heavy family Bible to guide them, the sight of Kranskop, in cross-section like a ruined pyramid, and the northerly flow of the nearby stream, convinced them they had reached as far as Egypt.
‘Dumbfucks,’ said Markos.
Coetzee would teach us in successive steps that the whole country was the Promised Land, given by the Heavenly Father to a people vying for status as ‘Chosen’, the Afrikaners. It was the aim, it seemed, of Christian National Education, and this tour, to convince us that we deserved the land, though none of the history seemed like our history at all.
We arrived at Paul Kruger House in Pretoria at midday, and there was a brief rendezvous in which the boys could meet up with the girls. Shoshana stood by the steps, spare; I sulked, an unwilling partner with arms crossed.
Inside, reunited with my friends, we could scoff at the stiff pictures of men with unwieldy beards on the wall. The thing that impressed our gang the most was the brass spittoon and we wondered what had changed so much in adults that they prohibited spitting in our present age but venerated it to such a degree in times past that presidents had practised it. Homeware had been designed specifically for spittle containment. And the name: spittoon! I could hear the shot echo off the brass insides.
The guide pinned her grey hair back and stood silent. Mrs Verwey stood in a shadow by the rope along the untouchable artefacts on display, her thick woollen skirt soaking up the dust, her cross heavy as the stinkwood dresser.
Mr Coetzee’s hair formed tight waves on his head and they swished under the low lamps as he shot a glance at the museum guide, in case he was about to be corrected. ‘Listen to the lady,’ said Coetzee. ‘She’s going to tell us about Paul Kruger. He was a great leader of our nation:
a soldier, a hunter, and a president – four times.’
The lady showed us the old harmonium, and the brass eagle given to Kruger by Irish-Americans as congratulations for repelling the British. She told us about Paul Kruger’s pipe and top hat and the signing of the Sand River Convention as she led us through the house. And then we were outside.
It ended abruptly and it seemed, then, preposterous that a president had lived in such a humble place, like my grandparents’ house. Kaisers and queens and Mark Twain had mingled with this man, but what a small country we lived in, if the size of the president’s house was anything to go by.
While Mr Coetzee lit a Gunston and spoke to the museum guide at the door, we ran around Kruger’s backyard. It was hot and Georgina and I ended up at the garden tap together.
‘My dad says Paul Kruger had an earring,’ she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘My brother has an earring,’ I said.
She didn’t grimace or laugh. ‘Cool,’ she said.
‘Maybe I’ll get one. In the holidays.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Cool.’
And I thought, maybe who you went on tour with wasn’t so important. Maybe it was who you spent time with on tour that was the thing. Or maybe who you went on tour with could change.
I cupped my hand at the tap to drink from it. ‘This place is stupid, though.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s creepy.’
Brian bounded over and shouldered me away from the tap, and bent down to sip from it himself. Now, I don’t know whether he meant this as a friendly, boyish butt, or if he had a sudden jealous impulse – he might have heard I’d wanted to take Georgina on tour.
It’s possible he meant nothing at all by it, but anger rushed at me and I let it in.
The feeling was like fingers spreading at the back of my neck, raising the wolf-hairs there. I pushed him and he staggered back.
He was bigger than me, ruddy-faced and shaped like a cask; his head seemed knocked onto his body like the stopcock. He pushed me back and I fell over. He was about to dive onto my chest when Mr Coetzee lifted him by the collar with a swipe, as if picking up a puppy or bending to pluck a daisy.
We’d all seen, at times, a deepening of complexion come over Mr Coetzee’s face and it had never once been a good omen. The museum guide was looking at us from the back door and that was the only thing that rescued us from the entirety of Coetzee’s wrath. In a corner of the garden, Coetzee told us, ‘This is the last fight or I leave you in Pretoria and fetch you on the way back from Umdloti. Do you want that?’
No, sir, we didn’t.
‘Now shake hands,’ said Coetzee. ‘Like men.’
Although we shook hands we didn’t become friends, as they say boys often do after a fight. Rather, we kept away from each other and the whole business kept me away from Georgina, too.
It’s not a pleasant thing for me to consider now, so many years later, how it made Shoshana feel. As I remember it, she stood off to the side when we were finished with the house and waited for me, then walked silently, loyally, next to me until the bus doors.
* * *
Before we were allowed to start dinner, Mr Coetzee told everyone to be silent and to close their eyes for grace, which would be said by the head of the hostel, a man in forest-green polyester slacks with sideburns like boots. We held hands, too, a circle forming around every table top. The hostel head recited the prayer in Afrikaans and I kept my eyes open and saw it was only me, Shoshana and a boy called Torsten who had theirs open, too.
Torsten lived in hostel during the week and on a farm near Alldays village on weekends, and had already told me that the Bible was just fairy stories. Nobody took him up on this. Although he wasn’t nearly the biggest kid in school, he was one of the toughest. He came in after weekends with thorn-bush scrapes and, once, deep red scratches from a lynx he’d freed from a trap.
Shoshana looked like she was in particular pain. A migraine, I supposed at the time, although it is possible that it was something else altogether, something tied to me. I was so caught up in my misery at being paired with Shoshana that I would never have considered whether she felt hard done by herself.
I was almost certainly not her ideal partner on the trip, but I spared her so little thought that I wouldn’t have been able to guess, even, who her ideal partner would be. I thought I was doing her such a favour. Perhaps it was the other way around: she seemed to understand more about me than I did about her – than I did about myself.
The head of the hostel was thanking God for the food and asking Him to guide us during this tour so that we could learn about this country we’d been blessed with, and to guard us and keep us safe.
Mrs Verwey, who was holding the right hand of Mr Coetzee and the left of another woman from the hostel, looked as if the prayer was hurting her too, like a fever had come over her. I detected her mouth moving and I thought perhaps she was saying a secret prayer on top of the one we could hear.
The food was a bony stew with great ladle-dollops of mashed vegetables that I wouldn’t eat. But one of the other boys took a bright-orange lump of sugared pumpkin off my plate as if he’d won a prize.
I slept deeply despite the unwelcoming surfaces in the dormitories and, after a more recognisable although still unsettling breakfast of greasy eggs and gristly bacon (I could never resist), we left Pretoria. We rose on the back of the highway to Johannesburg and curled around to the southeast. ‘At my church they say Joburg is a Sodom and Gomorrah all in one,’ said Barry. ‘One day God will punish them and destroy it. Like Warmbaths.’
‘Warmbaths isn’t destroyed. We passed it on the way to Pretoria.’
‘Ja but they have that nudist camp outside the town there, where men and women, and kids too, all go around naked all day. And now there’s been a drought there and none of the farmers can grow anything.’
I swapped seats with Lance, the boy with the potty haircut, so I could be nearer my friends.
‘I can’t wait for Joburg,’ said Joss.
‘I heard we go to a Wimpy on the way back,’ said Sean.
‘And the movie,’ said Markos. ‘That’s where you sit with your girl and hold hands,’ he said in a lowered voice.
‘I’m gonna kiss Angelique,’ said Joss.
‘I’m gonna kiss Diane,’ said Markos.
I said nothing. While the others would be striving for couplings, I would be bracing against them. I didn’t want Brian kissing Georgina and I certainly didn’t want to kiss Shoshana. I didn’t even want to think about Ma and Leo Fein.
But that species of fretting was soon driven out by another. The following leg to Blood River would be harrowing for me. I hadn’t counted on the trip being so long and felt the pinch in my bladder harden. I strangled with all my might. The pressure landed in waves and Barry saw I was under stress (Lance had insisted I swap back again).
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Should’ve gone to pee,’ I told him.
The bus had turned onto a dirt road and the bumps caught my muscles off guard so that they slackened, almost opening up their containment.
‘You really need to go, hey?’ said Barry, and I held tight. ‘Why don’t you ask Sir to stop?’
‘I can’t, no.’ By now I was bent double and embarrassed too. I wanted as little attention on me as possible, although if I leaked, that would certainly draw it. With my face pulled and reddened and the tooth-gap inhalations themselves sounding like a rushing stream, I didn’t want anyone looking upon me. Also, I couldn’t risk moving too much and who knew what standing up would do?
But the alternative of stopping the bus had its own set of embarrassments to consider. The girls’ bus would probably stop too, and two busloads would have the opportunity to watch me pee. ‘I’ll ask for you,’ said Barry. He went to the front to speak to Mr Coetzee. Coetzee and Barry looked back at me, Coetzee calm and Barry dutiful and obedient. The bus driver’s eyes flashed in the mirror. Barry walked ba
ck and sat down. ‘They say they can’t stop.’ He looked pleased he had conducted his business so efficiently; for him, the matter was concluded.
There were moments – it had gone on so long – that I felt the pressure had reduced and I could sit up and let the tension drain from my face. But the contractions soon returned to remind me that the need was real. Finally, we reached the site of the Battle of Blood River and as I stepped down off the bus my groin strained as if from a stitch. Without closing the door in the concrete stall, I let my fly down and let my own river flow out of me; a great release of pain and pleasure twisted in a single stream.
So strong is that memory that even today I won’t step on a bus without urinating first. If I’m somewhere with no place to pee and I haven’t relieved myself before, my brain leans on my bladder, convincing it that it’s full, and I break into a cold sweat at the phantom pressure.
I didn’t take in too much of what Mr Coetzee said about the Battle of Blood River and strolled along the commemorative laager of bronze ox wagons in the twilight. I was simply enjoying the feeling of being light and unencumbered. I think I was even pleasant to Shoshana, greeting her with energy and walking around the site with her.
Back on the bus, after my second, pre-emptive sprinkling, Barry seemed moved by the visit. It was getting dark already and he was huddled close to his exercise book, swapping between three coloured pencils and working his tongue out the corner of his mouth.
I didn’t understand Barry’s enthusiasm for the history of the Afrikaners: his surname was Jennings. He was no Boer.
‘It’s important,’ said Barry. ‘There might be another Blood River and we need to know about it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Terrorists. You know – blowing up the shopping centres and stuff? My uncle says if we don’t catch them, there’ll be another Blood River.’