Rumours of Rain

by Andre Brink

  “I cannot agree more wholeheartedly,” said Koos Cunt, stern and corpulent in his black suit. “If our leaders can no longer rely on the unquestioned loyalty of their own press —”

  “Since when is honest criticism regarded as disloyalty?” asked La Grange. “Do you expect me to shut my eyes or look the other way when things go wrong in the country?”

  “Ah, but one should be loyal even in one’s resistance.”

  I felt something stir inside me. My own sense of loyalty, perhaps – for Bernard had been arrested only a few weeks before and I was still convinced of his innocence. Irritated by Koos Cunt’s attitude, and not entirely without deliberate provocation, I said: “You know, Bernard Franken once remarked that ‘loyal resistance’ was only the token resistance of a whore, knowing she’ll get her money in the end.” (He’d also said: “‘Loyal resistance’ is the sort of resistance you find in a man who tries to assert his freedom by keeping a mistress without the knowledge of his wife.”)

  Only after I’d spoken I became aware of the strange silence which had settled in the room at the mere mention of that name.

  “Well, we all know what has become of Bernard Franken, don’t we?” said Koos Cunt after a while, gulping down the rest of his brandy.

  Editor La Grange was the only one to protest: “Wait a minute! Nothing has happened to him yet.”

  “He’s being detained by the Security Police,” said Thielman aggressively. “Do you call that ‘nothing’?”

  “He hasn’t been accused of anything,” La Grange persisted.

  “So what?” asked Koos Cunt, as if he were pronouncing a blessing on all of us. “The Government knows what it’s doing.”

  “In the old days,” said La Grange, “a man was arrested and taken to court in accordance with the Rule of Law. Nowadays they can keep him for as long as they wish – and then they can let him go just like that. Hasn’t that happened time and time again?”

  “You amaze me,” said Koos Cunt, staring at him through narrowed eyes. “I never thought I’d hear an Afrikaner newspaperman say that. Have you forgotten that in the war I was also imprisoned without trial? What about that?”

  “There was a war on.”

  “Don’t you think there’s a war on right now?”

  “Bravo!” said Professor Pienaar, raising a soft white fist. “I can assure you, I shall go on fighting until the blood rises to the bridles of our horses.”

  “Now there’s a prophetic vision,” said Koos Cunt. His voice was rising both in volume and in pitch. “We are engaged in battle with all the Forces of Evil. And what is at stake is the very soul of Afrikanerdom. What do you think will happen in this land if the Afrikaner renounces his identity?”

  “I can’t see that Bernard Franken’s detention or his acquittal can have anything to do with identity,” interposed one of the younger MPs. “We shouldn’t lose our perspective.”

  “You won’t repeat those words in public!” said Thielman, taking up the threatening stance of a boxer; but the blonde girl held him back.

  “Of course I won’t,” said the MP. “But I trust we’re speaking among friends at the moment, not in the caucus. I can tell you there’s a lot of us who feel very strongly that this sort of thing can only harm the Afrikaner.”

  “Where can it harm us?” asked Koos Cunt. “In the outside world? But what has the outside world go to do with us? We’ve always managed to pull through on our own. If God is with us —”

  “You’re very sure of God’s support, Uncle Koos,” Elise said, quite unexpectedly. “You make it sound like catechism.”

  Her two steel-blue eyes were staring straight at him. He looked away. Everybody seemed to wait for an answer, but he only raised his empty glass, mumbling: “Got to fill up,” as he walked off.

  I was the only one who knew what Elise had been referring to. A low blow, really. When she’d attended catechism in her matric year in Bloemfontein, she’d had a rather unfortunate encounter with him. One night he’d summoned her to the vestry to “discuss her soul”, to make sure that she’d been redeemed and that she knew her enemy, the Devil; to find out whether she had any evil urges in her and to impress upon her the sanctity of the “temple of the Lord”. In the course of the interview he began to feel her up. She told him to stop his nonsense if he didn’t want to be reported to the Church Council.

  “We’ve really strayed very far from Bernard Franken,” I tried to end the embarrassed silence in the crowded room.

  “Bernard Franken is the one who strayed,” said Thielman angrily. “Even back in our varsity days I could see which way he would be going.”

  “You certainly spent enough time at university to see a great many things,” I said curtly. He’d been at Stellenbosch for eight or nine years, thanks to generous scholarships awarded to him year after year to make sure he retained his position as hooker in the First XV. To everybody’s surprise, and probably to his own as well, he finally obtained a B.Comm. and left.

  There was trouble brewing, but our host intervened. “What one should really feel,” he said, “is a deep pity at the waste of such a talent. If one thinks of what Bernard might still have achieved for Afrikanerdom —”

  “He no longer deserves to be called an Afrikaner,” said the rector firmly.

  “But look at the facts,” I insisted. “What has he done? He’s being detained, that’s all. He hasn’t been charged with anything.”

  Returning with a newly filled glass Koos Cunt remained in the background for a while, trying to catch up with the conversation.

  “One should be most careful, though,” said Professor Pienaar, with a benign smile on his flabby white face (only the cheeks were very flushed). “I mean, to be associated with someone like that if one doesn’t even know for sure —”

  “Do you discount friendship, Professor?” I asked with restrained anger, aware of Elise’s approving eyes. “I think I know Bernard better than anyone else here tonight. I know he has never hesitated to speak out when he thought it necessary, whether one agreed with him or not. But he has never been underhand in any way. I refuse to believe for a moment that he would have got involved in anything sinister.”

  “I really don’t think the man deserves so much discussion,” said Koos Cunt.

  “Isn’t it time to put the whole matter in perspective,” asked La Grange, “by beginning to ask questions about the mentality which makes this sort of action by the Government possible?”

  “There are no questions in my mind at all,” replied the Moderator placidly. “The man is a shame on all of us. The sooner we forget about him the better.”

  “That’s a very uncharitable remark for a man of the Church, isn’t it?” said Elise quietly.

  This time he was ready for her. “My child,” he said, in a voice resonant with tolerance and goodwill, “when women start arguing with men in public, that in itself is a sign of something profoundly wrong. I think you are the one who should humbly start examining your conscience.”

  We were interrupted by the tinkling of a silver bell. The guests were invited to “powder their noses” before proceeding to the long table. Pienaar sat at the head, and Mother on the far end opposite him, where she could operate, with her foot, the button of a bell to discreetly summon the liveried waiters like a host of djinns.

  It was her hour of glory. Since daybreak, she revealed demurely (encouraged generously by her husband), she’d been working in the kitchen to prepare the meal, being of the conviction that this noble task should not be left to servants. Shouldn’t one concede that a well-prepared dish was as much an exquisite a work of art as a poem? Surely, what Van Wyk Louw had said about the balance of intellect and intuition in the poet, could be applied in equal measure to gastronomy?

  The meal was as impressive as any Mass.

  Kyrie: Mother’s home-made pâté (“Elizabeth David can be so vulgar, don’t you agree? To my mind Escoffier is the only one who —”), accompanied by a Dom Perignon to celebrate the Collected Poems
.

  Credo: Greek lemon soup and a very, very fine oloroso, the Dos Cortados of Williams & Humbert. (“Remember the little place in Jerez, Daddy? Such an earthy quality about it.”)

  Next, with a slight alteration of the usual sequence, the Agnus Dei: roast leg of lamb from the Karoo, specially provided by brother Sybrand and lovingly sprinkled with thyme and a soupçon of rosemary; served with petits pois and accompanied by a ’65 Roodeberg. (“Don’t you agree that all the subtlety and expanse of an entire Karoo landscape really finds its ultimate expression in a joint like this? I see it as a way of confessing the essence of one’s Afrikaansness. Where else in the world would one —”)

  Sanctus: Mother’s pêches au vin, marinaded overnight in Chablis. And how impish of Professor Pienaar to serve with it a Swartberg Aristaat, “that impudent little wine from Ladysmith” which he’d discovered all on his own, two years before, at less than fifty cents a bottle!

  A brief interlude while the table was cleared. A flickering of candles. The discreet, contented rumbling of someone’s stomach. Benevolent chuckling about a proposal for “intercourse smoking”. And then the collective withdrawal to the lounge for the Gloria: home-roasted coffee, cream cake, and John Pienaar’s cognac and port.

  Editor La Grange had the bad taste of choosing that moment for a reference to the demolition of squatters’ huts in the Cape, and malnutrition in general.

  “Ag, no,” said Mother smiling. “We all know that malnutrition is no longer a real problem in the world. Daddy and I were just talking about it yesterday, how our Bantus have raised their standards of living.” A brief silence. “If anybody is still undernourished in our day and age,” she continued, biting into her cream cake, “it’s just due to the wrong eating habits.”

  The gastronomic orgasm had been reached. In the contented afterglow Professor Pienaar began to read his poetry to us, in the rich, sensitive voice which had caused generations of first-year girls to fall in love with him. It was followed by an appreciative murmur (Mother: “He has such a sensitive organ for poetry, don’t you agree?”) and enthusiastic discussion by the literary men in our midst. We had to restrain ourselves for an unconscionable time before there came a gap in the conversation, in which we could excuse ourselves gracefully and depart without breaking up the party.

  At last we were outside in the sultry summer night. It was nearly eleven o’clock.

  Driving home to Johannesburg I switched on the car radio for the late news. The news which suddenly, brutally, retroactively changed the tenor of the entire evening.

  “The head of police in the Cape Peninsula, Brigadier Joubert, has confirmed to the SABC that Bernard Johannes Franken, detained by the Security Police four weeks ago, escaped from Caledon Square earlier today. With him was one of his co-detainees, a Coloured man, Kerneels Ontong. It has not yet been established how —”

  Charlie Mofokeng had been the first to inform me of Bernard’s arrest, four weeks before. On the Day of the Covenant, to enhance the irony of the victory of the Boers over the Zulus more than a century ago. I’d spent the day with Bea, and in the evening we had guests at a braai beside the pool until after midnight. I didn’t know where I was when the phone suddenly rang at half-past two in the morning.

  “Charlie?” It took a while to grasp what was going on. “What makes you phone at this hour of the bloody night?”

  “It’s Bernard.” He said something which in my dazed state I couldn’t grasp.

  “What about Bernard?”

  “Arrested. The SB.”

  “But why? How? When?”

  “Anybody’s guess. I just wanted you to know.”

  Slowly the confusion cleared. “Where did you hear it, Charlie?”

  Did he hesitate for a moment? “Just got it from a reporter on The Star.”

  “But it’s impossible!”

  “I’m telling you, man. I tried to phone his flat in the Cape, but no go.”

  “Perhaps he’s sleeping out.”

  “Jesus, man!” He sounded angry. “Why d’you think I’m phoning you? You got to do something.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You know all the Ministers and things, don’t you?”

  “I can’t phone them at three in the morning, Charlie. Anyway, suppose it’s just a rumour. How do I know —”

  “Oh, Jesus!” he said. “Don’t start with all that crap.”

  “Be sensible, Charlie. You know how easy it is for this sort of story to get out of hand. We’ve got to make sure in the morning.”

  For the rest of the night I couldn’t sleep. I refused to believe what he’d told me. From eight o’clock the next morning I dialled Bernard’s number in Cape Town at regular intervals. No use. His secretary couldn’t help me either. But it was nearly Christmas, the Supreme Court had gone into recess, he might be anywhere. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by enquiring at top level about something for which there might be a very simple explanation.

  Still it continued to gnaw on my conscience. I became irritable. At work I had an outburst when Charlie kept on insisting that I do something. With Elise I quarrelled simply because I didn’t feel like taking her into my confidence before something more concrete had come to light.

  It was only three days later that the Minister made the formal announcement, without giving any reasons: several persons in the Cape Peninsula had been detained by the Security Police in terms of the Terrorism Act, among them the prominent advocate, Bernard Franken.

  Once again it was Charlie who conveyed the news to me, when I arrived back at the office after lunch. It took me some time before I could focus my attention on anything.

  Charlie was waiting quietly. I waited for him to say: I told you so. I swear I would have hit him. But he didn’t say a word. And when I looked up – my God, how sentimental can one get? – he was standing there at the door, his black face ashen in colour, tears running down from under his glasses.

  I looked down and reached for the telephone. “I’ll phone the Minister immediately,” I said.

  “Don’t bother!” he spat out. Without waiting, he turned round and stormed out of my office. I was too shocked even to feel angry.

  It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that I finally got through to the Minister. We’d met at a few social occasions before and he’d impressed me as a very approachable person, but he sounded very formal and severe on the telephone.

  “I appreciate your concern, Mr Mynhardt, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. I cannot interfere with the processes of justice in the country. But I can give you the assurance that my men had very good reason for doing what they did. The whole matter will be put into perspective in public at our earliest opportunity.” It sounded like a prepared statement.

  There was a feeling of numbness in my stomach. I must have known they wouldn’t arrest such a public figure without grave reason. Yet I refused to believe anything negative about Bernard. He was my friend. I would stand by him. It had all been a ghastly mistake, no more.

  I still had to face Elise with the news. And Louis too. (“Let me tell you one thing, Dad: they don’t realise it, but if people like Bernard are turning against them their days are damned well numbered.”) The entire holiday season was a nightmare. Lying awake on Christmas Eve; suddenly hearing Elise’s voice in the dark saying:

  “Martin, I just can’t believe it. Not Bernard.”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “How can I sleep knowing that all the time we’re lying here, he may be – what are they doing to him?”

  “We must keep our faith in him. We know him well enough, don’t we? We owe it to him not to doubt his integrity for a moment.”

  How ironical that in those circumstances we could proceed to comfort each other by making love. While he —

  “Just wait,” I assured her. “One of these days they’ll let him go. This time they’ve made bloody fools of themselves.”

  But in the end I proved to be
the bloody fool for having believed in him. It was not easy to come to terms with that.

  People are essentially economic propositions. The way I see it, if I meet somebody he tries to sell himself to me; and whether I decide to buy him or not, is determined by his efficacity as a salesman. As far as Bernard was concerned, I’d never had any doubts before it was too late. But I never felt quite so easy about Charlie. Even if I did buy him in the end, wasn’t it at too high a price?

  In retrospect, our first meeting was not without comedy. When Bernard had phoned that morning, he’d only said:

  “Martin, will you be at home tonight? I’d like to bring over an old friend of mine. Grew up with him.”

  “Gladly,” I said. “We can always invite a few other guests as well.”

  “No, let’s keep it intimate, shall we? Not like old Prof Pienaar’s little soirées, remember?”

  “I remember only too well. And he hasn’t changed yet.”

  “All right, shall we make it about eight?”

  As always when she knew Bernard was coming over, Elise prepared a splendid meal (artichokes; duck with orange) and put on a long evening dress, her hair in a formal chignon behind her head. And then, well: Guess who’s coming to dinner.

  For me personally the ice had been broken years ago when I’d studied in London; and in the course of my work I regularly had dealings with Blacks, including businessmen from abroad. But this was the first time a Black man had come to dinner at my house. And for a moment I could only stand and stare at him.

  Bernard either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Charlie Mofokeng,” he said. “Martin Mynhardt.” Putting an arm round Charlie’s shoulders: “My old pal. Played together when we were kids on the farm.”

  “You mentioned something to that effect on the phone.” I put out my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Hi.” He was smiling with bared gums. “So this is the Martin Mynhardt Bernard’s been telling me about.”

  “Take a good look at him and tell me if you think there’s still hope for him,” said Bernard. “Between the two of us we may be able to sort him out.”