Rumours of Rain

by Andre Brink

  Theo went on talking: about some administrative building he’d just completed, with a group of statues in the foyer which had had to be removed after public protest about their nudity; a recent visit to Scandinavia with Marie and the kids; Dad’s illness.

  And then, without any warning, he asked: “Martin, do you regard yourself as a happy man?”

  “What a question! Yes, I suppose I do. Why?”

  “I just wanted to know. In your work, your everyday life. I mean —”

  “Well, it’s been a battle, but I’ve come out on top all right.”

  “I’m not talking about success. Are you happy?”

  “To be honest, I’m so tired when I get home at night that there’s no time for thinking about happiness or unhappiness.”

  “You haven’t answered my question yet.”

  I reflected. I knew there had been a time when I would have replied in the affirmative without a moment’s hesitation. The time just after our return from England, when I’d started as legal adviser to a finance company. It wasn’t easy. I still had all my study debts to settle and I wasn’t exactly earning a royal salary; and yet, undoubtedly, I was what Theo would have called a happy man. It couldn’t last, of course. It didn’t take me long to discover the limitations of any legal position. So I gave it some good, solid thinking. In a country developing at such a tempo, I decided, the most promising future lay in the economy, in industry. And right in the heart of our economic formula was mining. Once I’d sorted that out, the rest was, if not easy, at least predictable.

  Experience on the Stock Exchange. I’d always been quick to learn. Then the transfer to Anglo-American. The advantage of the position lay in one’s access to confidential information – often involving projects too trifling for such a giant company but an ideal starting point for a young entrepreneur. Provided one was willing to wait patiently for the right opening and then to pounce immediately. Sometimes a couple of hours could be decisive.

  The moment I opened that particular file I knew my chance had come. Submissions and geological reports on a newly surveyed area in the Northern Transvaal. I didn’t have nearly enough capital for such a project, but I knew it might be years before I would have another break like that. I simply had to get in before the file reached a Board meeting.

  I didn’t discuss it with Elise, knowing in advance what her reaction would be. Literally overnight I rounded up backers, personally risking every penny I possessed in the world, including everything I could borrow. And before Anglo-American had time to act, I’d acquired all the options myself.

  There are people who have never forgiven me for it. And with Elise I had a series of bitter quarrels, the worst of our married life. But in my sort of work there isn’t any room for sentiment. Kill or be killed. And if one is forced, from time to time, to step over corpses, well, then it is simply part of the game. One either has the instinct or lacks it; one either plays the game or stays right out of it. That is the first and, in effect, the only real choice involved. From that moment one only goes on. An experience no less exciting in its own way than big-game hunting. And the dividends are infinitely greater. Also the chances of failure: like the threat of death in the bush. Never a moment to relax or sit back. It is uphill, uphill all the time. Losing one’s grip, even for an instant, may mean the end.

  “Actually happiness is a sentimental notion, don’t you agree?” I told Theo that afternoon. “But all right, to the extent in which it may be relevant, I’d say: Yes, I have nothing to complain about. Neither has Elise. Or my children. It won’t be necessary for my son to go barefoot like I did.”

  He just sat looking at me, an expression of discontent on his face.

  “But why do you ask?” I insisted. “Aren’t you happy then?”

  “No.”

  I hadn’t expected such a frank reply.

  “What’s the matter then?”

  “I’ve kept it to myself for years, Martin. One learns to live with it. But now that Dad has fallen ill – you know it’s just a matter of time, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know. But what has that got to do with your unhappiness?”

  “When I was a kid, you know, I was quite content to follow you in everything you did.” A wry smile. “I’m not blaming you, Martin. But at school it was hell to be told all the time, in every new standard I reached, that I had to follow my elder brother’s good example. And you know how Dad and Ma always insisted that we had to do well in everything. So I decided I’d show you all. I’d show the whole world. I would become an architect and help to build a wholly new country. I’d force them to admit that I was something after all. Even if my heart wasn’t in it.”

  “I still don’t see what you’re driving at.”

  “I want to be a farmer.”

  “A farmer?!”

  “Don’t laugh, please. I’ve always wanted to be one. But ever since we were kids everybody assumed you would inherit the family farm one day. And even though we could see you had no interest in farming we knew the place would be yours. That’s normal, you’re the eldest. But now that Dad has cancer …” He looked straight into my eyes; I made no attempt to avoid his stare. “Martin, you don’t really want that farm, do you?”

  I shrugged.

  “I want you to discuss it with Dad. Ask him. Tell them. Perhaps it’ll make him feel better. And it stands to reason I’ll pay you every cent you want for it.”

  “Why don’t you talk to them yourself?”

  “You know very well they’ve never paid much attention to me, it’s always been you. If you tell them, they’ll listen to you.”

  “But if you’re so keen on farming surely you can buy any farm you wish? You have enough money.”

  “I know. But it’s more than just that. It’s the family farm as such. I don’t want to become a farmer just because I’m sick of the rat race. I want to go there. I want my children to walk barefoot and swim in the same dam I used to know when I was small.”

  I looked down at my hands.

  “Will you do that for me, Martin? For Heaven’s sake don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to diddle you out of your inheritance. But I know you can’t really care less about the farm.”

  “All right, I’ll talk it over with them,” I said, suddenly feeling grudging and threatened. I started paging through my files so he could see I was busy.

  Naturally I didn’t discuss it with anyone when we went down to the farm that weekend. I knew it would needlessly upset Dad. And what was the point of encouraging this new sentimental notion of Theo’s? He’d always been a “man of the future”: what was this sudden whim about returning to the past? My God, was he going soft in the head? Or had he just been hit by the blues which supposedly beset one in one’s early forties? I had to protect him from himself.

  After our return from the farm I telephoned him. To make it as easy as possible for him I said: “Listen, I discussed that idea of yours with Dad and Ma. But they won’t hear of it. You know what Ma is like when she’s made up her mind about something. And I honestly don’t think it’s wise to upset Dad too much in his present state.”

  “Of course.” His voice was calm and drained of emotion. “I understand. Thanks anyway.”

  By way of recompense I saw to it that, soon afterwards, he got the contract to design a new business centre in which I had a share. It would be one of the biggest projects he’d ever undertaken, a commission for which the best architects in the country had tendered. And it took some insistent diplomacy to persuade my colleagues, for I knew some of the other designs were really more promising than Theo’s. But I wanted to help him get over his sentimental delusion; and in the process he would be amply rewarded. No one could have expected me to do any more than that.

  Why am I writing down more and more of what I would have preferred not to discuss? What is worse, it seems to become more and more of a “novel”, dictated by a form of romanticism of which I’ve tried over many years to rid myself. And yet I have no choice but to take an u
nfaltering look not only at that weekend, but beyond it – the way one would peer through a windscreen smeared with gnats – at the entire landscape of my life. Perhaps that is the only remaining hell.

  Strange that Charlie should also have spoken about “hell”. As if one can never really escape from it.

  We drove out of the city, towards the south-west. To Soweto. I’d never been there before (nor since). And what I remember of it is muddled – not just because of the accumulation of impressions, but because I was so furious with Charlie. And scared. I may as well admit it. It was, perhaps, the only experience in my adult life which truly scared me, while at the same time it was impossible to find any reason for it. For nothing happened. That was the worst. Nothing happened, but anything might happen at any moment. Suppose we were stopped by police? A man in my position. It would immediately be given a political angle. What was Martin Mynhardt doing in Soweto? They could break me for it if they wanted: in South Africa people had been broken for much less.

  The houses. Not the shacks of iron and wood and junk I could vaguely recall from the Moroka one had driven past years ago, but identical oblong blocks with tiny doors and windows: tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of them. The mere uniformity was terrifying. My God, how would one ever escape from that maze once one was lost in it? Suppose Charlie dropped me and said: Now go home on your own? Smoke. It was still early afternoon, but the previous night’s smoke still lay in a dark bank over the townships while a new layer was already beginning to form. Children playing and kicking up a row. Potholes and ditches in the dusty road. Rubbish dumps on every street corner. Ribbed dogs scavenging for food and slinking off whenever someone approached. Women in bedraggled little gardens behind wire fences: some wearing the long skirts and headscarves of rural areas, others in minis or the shrill colours of city fashions; slacks and platform heels. Some pregnant, with bulging bellies; others holding suckling infants to their breasts or carrying them on their backs; still others as thin as reeds, with sharply pointed bras. Boys gambling with cards or pebbles or coins in the middle of the street. Here and there an old man on a tomato box in the sun in front of his house. And then the open wastelands between townships. Rubble heaps, erosion ditches, the skeletons of old cars; children scuttling like cockroaches in the garbage of smoky mounds. Old thin women poking in the rubble like moulting black fowls, or crows, or vultures. Teams of boys playing soccer in the dust, with soccer balls, tennis balls, bundles of rags, stuffed stockings. Netting-wire fences fluttering with windblown litter, like a parody of Christmas: papers, plastic bags, tufts of wool and hair, patches of multicoloured rags. Churches, halls, schools with bare playing grounds surrounded by frayed trees. Jazzy shops. Petrol pumps. The face-brick and barbed wire of police stations. And heaped up beside the dusty lanes serving as streets: all the refuse of a human existence – broken baths, tins, drums, cardboard boxes, torn-off car doors or shattered windscreens, bits of hose-pipe and lengths of wire, tyres, chamber pots, plastic buckets, three-legged pots, aluminium casseroles, the rags and remnants of discarded clothes, dead cats, turds, the tattered remains of carpets and curtains. At that time of the day there weren’t many cars among the little houses and shanties, but what could be seen ranged from dilapidated old American models and patched-up Volkswagens to a few shiny Mercedes, Jags and Citroëns.

  “You could have come by bus too,” said Charlie. “Did you know they organise coach tours through the townships, like through the game reserve? See the natives in their natural habitat. Please don’t feed the animals.”

  “That’s enough, Charlie. It’s time to go home now. You wanted to show me, and now I’ve seen it. Let’s go.”

  “How do you know what I want to show you? Give me a chance, man. We’re first going round to my place. What makes you think I’m such a bad host?”

  He paid no attention to my objections. Somewhere in the midst of all the identical little boxes he found his house and stopped. From all directions in the neighbourhood swarms of small children converged on the Mercedes. If the car got damaged, I swore grimly, there would be hell to pay.

  A thickset, neatly but plainly dressed woman opened the door.

  “Meet my friend Mr Mynhardt,” Charlie said. (I still don’t know who she was.)

  In the small, tidy front room we sat down – Charlie on a straight-backed dining chair, I on the floral Chesterfield sofa. The cement floor was covered with a blue linoleum. Plastic flowers in a vase on the ball-and-claw table. A calendar on the wall.

  “Charlie, are you sure it’s not against the law for me to be here?”

  “Of course it’s against the law. But don’t worry. Here’s the tea.” He rose to take the tray from the woman, offering it first to her, then to me.

  “And how are you, Mr Mynhardt?” she asked in a neutral voice.

  What could I reply to that? I said something non-committal. She smiled. And so the tone for the rest of our jolted conversation was set. I had the impression that Charlie, sitting back and watching me, was thoroughly enjoying himself, while all the time I was trying to concentrate, as unobtrusively as possible, on what I could see of the street behind the gingham curtains, in case a police van passed or stopped outside.

  There was a constant backdrop of sound: radios or record-players, playing mostly jazz, and just too far off to distinguish any tune (most of the stuff probably didn’t have a tune anyway), leaving only a disquieting pulsation on the threshold of one’s consciousness as accompaniment to our uncomfortable small-talk. Children bursting out crying or shouting or screaming. The loud voices of women conversing in the street, undaunted by the three or four or five blocks separating them. Dogs barking; one howling interminably, accompanied by the rhythmic sickening smacks of the thong or rubber pipe with which he was being beaten.

  It seemed like at least an hour before Charlie finally rose. I followed him in nearly indecent haste, almost neglecting to say goodbye to the enigmatic woman. Her hand cool and dry in mine. A secretive smile. “So nice to have met you, Mr Mynhardt.”

  But that proved to be only the beginning. I don’t think Charlie had planned it in advance; but he was a master of improvisation. I was still under the impression that we were on our way out of the labyrinth of child-block houses, threatening in their very passivity, when he suddenly stopped again.

  “Something wrong?” I asked, startled.

  “No, we’re just dropping in on an old pal of mine.”

  “But Charlie —”

  “Relax, man, be a sport. It’s not every day I have the chance to treat you.”

  Did he want to treat me or to terrorise me? I’m still not sure. All I could tell with a measure of certainty after another hour had passed, was that he had no intention of taking me home before dark. And as the afternoon grew older, in our visits to one “old pal” after the other, the tone of the townships changed almost imperceptibly. One became aware of the piercing sirens of trains following each other in the distance in more and more rapid succession; of more cars appearing in the streets, sending clouds of dust up against the windows; of a low wave of sound approaching from far away, the dull thunder of the crowd returning home – the thousands, the hundreds of thousands of workers vomited from Johannesburg, from iGoli. The din became more comprehensive, at the same time more general and more intimate. And with the coming of the dark the entire obscene spectacle of human life from cradle to grave was reduced to sound. In the hours we spent there I became conscious – not with the exact formulation of statistics, but with the warm biological shock of sudden discovery in my guts – of babies being born and old people dying in my immediate vicinity; of people being murdered and others raped; of men and women making love or assaulting one another; of fathers getting drunk and children beaten. All the events taking place all over the world every day, but here with an immediacy and an overwhelming obtrusiveness I’d never experienced so violently before.

  Outside in the increasing dusk the noise of soccer-playing children went on until it
was too dark to see; complemented by the deeper voices of men joining them after work. And gradually, as in a cross-fade in a film, the outdoor sound was transformed into indoor sound. More and more radios. People talking in loud voices. Great explosions of laughter. Terrifying quarrels, screams, shouts. Short staccato silences. And, because of the innumerable houses huddled so closely together, the staggering sensation of the presentness of everything became even more overpowering. And one reacted to it, not with one’s ears, or nose, or mouth or whatever, but physiologically, with one’s whole body.

  More and more strangers drifted into the house of the friend where we were having drinks, lured like moths by an open flame. Not that there was all that much light, for none of the houses we visited had electricity. Outside, there were mesh-protected lamps on tall posts at street-corners, each huddled selfishly over its own small pool of light. And in the distance, marking the course of the high barbed-wire fences enclosing the townships, were blinding floodlights reminiscent of the photographs of concentration camps.

  In the end there must have been twenty or more people crammed into the small front room. Women disappeared from time to time and reappeared with food – prepared in the kitchen and in the kitchens of neighbouring houses, I presumed, judging from the seemingly endless number of plates and knives and forks passed from hand to hand until everybody had been served. We ate on our laps; what it was, I couldn’t make out, and I didn’t want to give offence by asking. All those bodies, the smell of perspiration, the powder and perfume of the women: in the unsteady light of candles and lamps there was an air of unreality about it all. I can’t remember anything of the conversations – there were too many of them going on all around me at the same time. No one seemed to pay any particular attention to me anyway, I was just one of the many who’d happened to drop in, Charlie’s pal, meet Mr Mynhardt.