by Andre Brink
“How am I going to get back to Johannesburg on Monday?” I asked. “I can’t drive like this.”
“Can’t I try to stick it together for you?”
“One of the lenses is smashed.”
“Oh dear. Then Louis will have to drive. He’ll be all right, won’t he?”
“Not in the Mercedes.”
“Now don’t get so upset,” she said. “It’s time for breakfast. Where have you been all the time?”
I put the pieces back into my pocket. “Down to the graveyard.”
She stared at me more intensely, obviously expecting me to elaborate, but I didn’t.
“I’m glad to see you haven’t started digging your own hole yet, like Oupa and Ouma Neethling,” I remarked, to change her mood.
“Oh the soil is much too hard in this drought,” she replied with a cryptic smile.
Kristina was busy in front of the coal stove. This time there was no sign of the young woman Thokozile and her baby. We went through to the dining-room.
“Louis is still in bed,” Ma said, noticing my glance in the direction of the passage.
“I’ll go wake him up.”
“No, let him sleep. I’m sure he can do with a bit of holiday too.”
“He’s been having one long holiday ever since he came back from Angola,” I said resentfully.
“It can’t be so bad.”
“It’s worse. He refuses to go to university or anywhere else. You know he’d always wanted to become an engineer.”
“What does he do then?”
“Nothing. Stays in bed until ten or even later. Never leaves his room for days on end. And when he does come out, he just disappears for three or four days or even longer.”
“What sort of friends has he got?”
“I wish I knew. No use asking him. Easier to get an answer from a stone wall. He’s impossible, I tell you.”
Sitting down, she called to the kitchen: “Kristina, bring in the porridge!” Adding quietly and sensibly: “You were a difficult boy too when you were his age.”
“But not like him!”
“Will you say grace for us?”
Mechanically reciting the short prayer I recognised, with a shock, in my own voice the very intonation with which Dad had always spoken the words. For the moment the pretentious headstone down in the graveyard had become irrelevant as I made the disquieting discovery that, in subtler ways, Dad was still alive. I wondered whether Ma had also recognised his voice. It irritated me.
He could be very absent-minded at table, especially when he’d been working on some new “research”. Then it had been Mother’s duty to remind him to say grace, which he would promptly do without even giving us time to close our eyes. But it had happened regularly that, a few minutes later, it would suddenly occur to him to recite his prayer, oblivious of the fact that he’d already said it: and without any warning he would start again, catching us with forks in our hands, or in the middle of a conversation. Then we all had to keep our composure and pretend we hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Because if anyone started giggling or dared to remind him that he’d already said grace before, he would fly off the handle: those were the rare occasions when Dad really lost his temper, accusing us of having no respect for either himself or the Lord; and he would begin to hold forth on the decay of societies in which religion was on the decline: If you go back in history —
At the time, we merely found it odd, or endearing, or amusing. But writing about it now, it has a touch of great sadness about it. He was such a stranger in our world; there were so few certainties he could cling to. Those first months after they’d moved to the farm must have been sheer hell to him. We weren’t there to give a hand – I’d just entered university and Theo was finishing his Matric in Griqualand West – but Ma told us all about it. He refused to touch a sick cow, let alone one that was having trouble in giving birth: she was the one who had to take over. He had a talent for breaking things, but then he would insist on mending the broken implements himself, invariably damaging them even worse than before, so that, in the end, they had to be replaced at great cost.
One night the dogs woke them up with a frenzy of barking.
Ma nudged him with an elbow: “Wim! Wim, wake up!”
“Huh? What’s the matter?”
“Listen to the dogs.”
“What about the dogs?”
“They’re barking like mad.”
“They bark all the time.”
“There must be something among the cattle. You’d better go and make sure.”
“Why me?”
“Who else is there to go?”
Grumbling, he got up. She didn’t want him to light a candle lest there were thieves who could be scared off by the light. He bumped his head against the bed trying to find his shoes in the dark. It took a while before he cooled off sufficiently to continue the elaborate preparations. Finally he took his gun from the cupboard. The dogs went on barking furiously.
Ma accompanied him through the back door and round the house. It was new moon, so dark one couldn’t see the outline of the hills against the sky. After he’d stumbled over a paraffin tin in the backyard, they realised it would be senseless to go any farther without a light, so reluctantly Ma went back for the lantern. Holding it as high as she could, she led the way.
Once again he stumbled, this time over a stone; and as he fell against her, she dropped the lantern, which immediately went out. By that time they were halfway down to the kraal and the dogs were still barking. Realising the danger she was in, Ma hurled herself headlong to the ground – not a moment too soon, for at that very instant Dad pulled off a shot behind her, missing her by inches.
“Wim, for God’s sake, you’re killing me!”
The dogs went berserk. The cattle trampled down the wooden gate of the kraal and stampeded off into the night. It was late the following afternoon before the last ones were rounded up. No one ever discovered what had caused the trouble: thief, marauder, jackal or whatever. Fortunately there had been no damage apart from the broken gate. But from that day Ma preferred to investigate on her own, with or without the gun, whenever there was a noise at night. And Dad had the little outbuilding behind the dairy restored and repainted; inside, he fitted it out with shelves and filled them with his books and as time went by he spent more and more time in study, withdrawing increasingly from the outside world.
It was more than mere eccentricity. He sometimes tried to communicate to me what he really felt and thought about: it wasn’t easy, we were so far apart, but he tried. One afternoon, I remember, we were sitting in his study. Outside, the piccanins were cavorting with the calves, and there were birds in all the trees, a summer’s day.
“If you go back in history,” Dad said (I’m trying to reconstruct the general content of the conversation: the actual details escape me – but so many of his monologues had the same drift), “if you go back in history, you generally find two kinds of people. They are the doers, the Caesars and the Attilas and the Napoleons and so on. And then there are those who come later and who try to find the meaning of what the others have done. An act isn’t something clear and defined and tangible like a stone you can pick up from the ground. And if you look at our people” – for sooner or later all his discussions returned to “our people” – “you will see the same thing. Ever since the first Marthinus Wilhelmus Mynhardt arrived here – remember what I told you about his travels and explorations? I’ve just got a new book on eighteenth-century explorers at the Cape, remind me to show it to you – anyway, ever since he first came here, our people have had their hands full just trying to survive. You can check up for yourself, not one of them was a learned sort of a man. They could barely read and write. Because the land was still so wild, you see, it had to be broken in like a horse. Every new generation did it in their own way. But it can’t just go on like that, blindly. Sooner or later one has got to sit down and try to find out: What have they really achieved? I mean, if you look at them from one point of vi
ew, they’ve all been losers. But were they really? Or did each of them go a little bit further with the long process of breaking in the land? That’s why I think the work I’m trying to do may not be so useless after all.”
That whole long-winded explanation to justify himself.
“Yes, of course, Dad.” It was better to agree with him.
“I mean, the farm isn’t doing as well as it should, is it? But it’s not because I’m a bad farmer. It’s just that I have a more important vocation in life. Do you understand?”
“I can understand that very well, Dad.”
“Actually I rather like farming. I think I’ve got it in me to become a prosperous farmer. But it’s a matter of priorities. And if you go back in history, you’ll find it’s always been the same. Every man must define his own priorities first of all.”
“Undoubtedly, Dad.”
“One has got to open one’s heart to history, you see, to find out what it really wants to say to you. You can’t just sit down and read it like a book. Even though it may all be printed in books, you need a code, as it were, to decipher it. A matter of interpretation. And perhaps posterity will realise that what I’ve done hasn’t been all in vain. I mean, trying to reshape and hone one’s definitions. What does it mean to be a Mynhardt? What does it mean to be an Afrikaner? That sort of thing. If you go back —”
“You’re quite right, Dad. It’s a most important function.”
Thinking back now, I suddenly get the impression that what he really tried to say to me that afternoon was, quite simply: Help me. But how could I help him? What did he really want of me? I couldn’t light his lantern, like Ma had done, or carry his rifle, or help a cow deliver her calf. I don’t think that was what he’d really wanted of her either. But what was there I could possibly do for him?
On the afternoon in question I gave him a cheque to help him cover some of the recent farming expenses. He thanked me profusely and, in his meticulous way, put the cheque in his shirt pocket and fastened the button. It wasn’t the first time I’d helped him, nor the last. Ever since I’d started earning my own money I’d contributed money to the farm, usually when Ma told me things were going badly. Nineteen thousand seven hundred and eighty-five rand in all, to be exact: I’ve kept a note of it. I did it, fully realising it was throwing it in the water, because Pa just did not know how to handle it. But I never complained. It was only in the light of recent events that, when I went to the farm that particular weekend, I felt I’d reached the point where one couldn’t go on casting one’s bread upon the water without ever getting anything in return for it.
Perhaps I should mention that the cheque I’d given Dad that afternoon never came back to me with my bank statement. He never cashed it. That’s what I’m trying to make clear: his complete irresponsibility in financial affairs. It was, after all, a matter of several hundred rand.
I cannot, of course, swear to it that I consciously thought of all that as I sat at the breakfast table with Ma that Saturday morning; but I was certainly thinking of Dad and the failure he’d been on the farm. However, I deliberately avoided talking about the sale again, knowing Ma well enough to realise that she needed time to accommodate the idea.
To make conversation, I said: “You know, I really had a fright when I came outside this morning. I never thought the drought could get as bad as this.”
“I told you, didn’t I?” She seemed almost smug. “You know, the day of Dad’s funeral was the last time it rained.”
“And then it was a flood.”
“Yes, we were nearly swept out of house and hearth. Old Lawrence up there had five thousand rands’ damages.” She smiled. “But you know how it is: when a farmer tells you he’s had this or that amount of damages, it means he’s included his drowned labourers in his reckoning.”
“Were some of the labourers drowned?”
“Of course. Three up there by his place. Two of ours. Not that they really were ours. They just keep turning up on the farm all the time, and squatting.”
“It’s because you’re too good for them.”
“Well, you know what the Lord said about one’s neighbour.”
“But what’s going to happen to you if the rains don’t come soon? Those poor cattle, they look like sheets of corrugated iron.”
“I’ll manage.” She was looking right into my thoughts again. “One must just go on praying.”
“And if God doesn’t listen?”
“He’ll listen when the time comes.” Her mood was expanding now. “You remember that time in Griqualand West when it didn’t rain for three years? Then we held the prayer meeting and I took my umbrella and my raincoat to church with me. They all looked at me as if I was out of my mind, in that blistering heat. Even Dominee was joking about it. But I just said to him: ‘I thought we’d come to ask God for rain? Where’s your faith then?’ And as we came out of church, it started raining. I was the only one of the congregation who got home dry.”
“Haven’t they tried firing rockets into the clouds around here yet?” I asked.
“No, why should they? It’s a bad thing, that. Trying to twist the Lord’s arm, they are.” She was picking at a sliver of meat between two of her strong white teeth. “That’s what’s wrong with our world today, sonny. In the good old days one prayed for rain and shot at one’s enemies. Now they’re shooting for rain and praying for their enemies. Isn’t that just asking for trouble?”
“But you don’t think it’s a sin to drill for water?”
“No, why should it be a sin? The water’s in the ground already, isn’t it? Just waiting to be taken out.”
As we rose from the table Kristina looked in with the news that the “water man” had arrived and was waiting outside.
6
HE WAS STANDING at the back door, a big, flabby man with an infinitely sad face, wearing a black tailcoat as if he were on his way to church, and holding his hat in both hands, pressed against his ample stomach. Behind him stood his Black helper, an old man with greying peppercorns, a small iron trunk on the ground before him.
“Morning, Mrs Mynhardt,” said the stranger, as if to commiserate with a death in the family. “Name’s Scholtz. I’ve come about the water.” His voice was high and hoarse, and he spoke so softly that one had difficulty in following him.
“Good day, Mr Scholtz,” she said. “You’re early. This is my son.”
“Yes, I came early,” he said sadly. “There’s no pull in the water after noon, you see.” He offered me his hand. It lay limply in mine, cold and damp like a death sweat.
He seemed to be able to divine not only water but thoughts as well, for with a pained look on his face he withdrew his hand. “I’m sweating,” he announced. “That’s always a sign of water.” He looked around slowly. “Won’t surprise me if this house is built right on an underground course. Now if you don’t mind, Missus, I’ll put on my hat again. Bad for the brains.”
“It will be a good thing if you could find something near the house,” said Ma. “It’ll make it easier to irrigate the fields. Our borehole is a mere trickle, and one of these days winter will be over.”
“Any willows nearby?” he asked, obviously without having paid any attention to her. “Quince is all right too, but my hands operate better with a willow fork.”
“Behind the dairy,” said Ma.
“Will you go and cut me a forked stick?” the man asked me, studying me in great sympathy.
I turned to fetch a knife from the kitchen, but stopping me with an impatient gesture as if he’d expected nothing better of me, he handed me his own pocket-knife.
He and Ma remained behind, talking, while I went down to the dairy in cautious, measured paces: without glasses, the earth seemed to be farther away from me than normally, as if every step carried me across an abyss.
“I prefer you without glasses.” Bea.
“And I prefer you without your dark glasses too.”
It is shocking, the acuteness with which she suddenly
returns to me, a burning loss. So often in our relationship there were moments of an almost unbearable intensity, an awareness of existing in extremis. The day we met at the hole where Dullabh’s Corner had been. The week in the red hut at Ponta do Ouro. The night I returned from the Northern Transvaal, just before Dad’s death. Would it really have been our last night if he hadn’t died just then? Everything seems to interlock with disconcerting, almost uncanny, precision.
I can recall her in sensual detail. That night in my apartment. The short dark hair and narrow face with the wide mouth; the small hollows formed by her collarbones as she bent over to refill my glass. The slight trembling of her breasts in the open muslin blouse: narrow pear-shaped breasts, the most vulnerable thing about her, drooping slightly, the elongated nipples: woman-of-thirty.
Her words on the telephone, in that final conversation before the weekend: “Martin, is it really quite impossible to postpone this farm business just for one week? I must see you.”
“But I told you.”
“Oh well, if it’s out of the question. Oh, God.”
“Goodbye, Bea. See you Tuesday.”
I wish I could scrap the rest of the weekend and proceed to Bea. But in this attempt to reconstruct the increasing complexity of what was happening I have no choice but to move with the time. Saturday was only Saturday, with no foreknowledge of Sunday or Monday or today. Otherwise everything will start running like watercolours on a wet sheet of paper. And it is imperative to keep it all apart.
Perhaps I really stood thinking of Bea while I was selecting and cutting a firm fork from the willow tree. I know I must have been absent-minded, because the knife slipped, nicking me across the web between thumb and forefinger. Tiny specks of blood appeared on the skin. Instinctively sucking it off, I returned with the fork.
“Oh well,” said the big man with the drooping shoulders when he took it from me and inspected it morosely. “Oh well, it’ll have to do.” He started stripping the bark off the fork, exposing the bare white wood.
“Will you go with me, Missus?” he asked. “There’s more pull in the water if a member of the family goes with one.”