Rumours of Rain

by Andre Brink

  I sat up, shocked. “How did that happen?”

  “I went to your house.” Was it intentional that she sat down in a chair out of my reach?

  “But Bea, how the hell —”

  A brief smile; the small muscle in her cheek. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t the sort of melodramatic confrontation you’d probably think of.”

  “But how did you do it? And why?”

  “I was curious.”

  “Don’t you realise —”

  “It started quite by accident,” she said flatly. “I was visiting Aunt Rienie when she referred to you and Elise. Quite on impulse I said I’d like to meet Elise one day and she promised to take me when she went to visit her again. So you see, there’s no reason to be so upset at all.”

  “But you know Aunt Rienie is the world’s worst gossip.”

  “What’s there to gossip about? She doesn’t know anything about you and me. She only knows I met you at her party, nothing more.”

  She rose to get a cigarette from the box on the table. The small flame darting up against her cheek; a hand cupped protectively around it, long nervous fingers. She sat down again. Her blouse was still open. I knew she wouldn’t bother to do anything about it: probably she hadn’t even noticed that she’d neglected to button it. But I did. And seeing her bare breasts while she sat there nonchalantly telling me about her visit to my wife, both unsettled and excited me unduly.

  “Aunt Rienie phoned on Monday morning to ask whether I felt like going with her. She’d probably arranged it specially so I could take her in my car, you know what a lovable old sponger she can be.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “You really have a lovely house. Lovely garden. Lovely everything. The perfect setting for a magnate.”

  “Bea, I asked you —”

  “And Elise is a lovely woman.” A short pause. “Or: was. For she doesn’t seem to bother much about her appearance now.” Looking at me over the rim of her glass, she asked: “Does she know about us?”

  “What a question. Of course not.”

  “She isn’t happy.”

  I got up. “Look, Bea, say what you want to say and get it over. What happened?”

  “Nothing. What did you expect? She talked to Aunt Rienie most of the time. Enquired politely about my work and so on, but that was all. As far as she was concerned, I was just a friend of Aunt Rienie’s who’d come along.”

  “I still don’t see what you tried to achieve with such a foolish little adventure.”

  “I wanted to know. One gets curious. And you never wanted to tell me anything about her or your home.”

  “Obviously not. One tries to keep the different parts of one’s life apart. What do you think would happen —”

  “And for how long do you think your sort of apartheid is going to work?” she asked quietly.

  I was vexed, but controlled it by first pouring myself another whisky and taking a sip. “It will last for as long as I have control over my own life,” I said at last, sitting down again. “And now you’ve gone and —”

  “I did nothing about it whatsoever. I only wanted to know, I told you.”

  “I never thought you could be so childish.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Well, I hope your curiosity is satisfied now,” I said after another silence. “And I hope it’ll be the last time you —”

  She leaned back, resting on her elbows. The loose blouse slipped off one of her shoulders but she made no effort to cover it up.

  “You wanted to exclude me from the most important part of your life,” she said flatly. “I had to go and see for myself. How often have I told you one’s got to learn to live with everything one knows. It also means one must try to find out everything.”

  “And what are you going to do now that you know?” I asked, trying to control my breath.

  “Oh I’ve accepted my role as mistress long ago,” she said, staring deeply into her pale blonde glass. “Not a very honourable role, I admit, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I shouldn’t expect much more than that from life. It’s happened to me too often to be mere coincidence. One learns to accept responsibility. You can’t be exploited unless you put yourself at someone’s disposal.” A bitter laugh. “Even being a mistress implies a measure of security. One learns to be satisfied with being only half a person. And for both of us it becomes easier just to carry on without asking too much.”

  “And now you’ve had enough?” I inhaled slowly, deeply.

  “It’s not that. But now I’ve seen the rest of your life at last. Or at least part of it. Before, you were the man who came and went, sharing stolen hours with me. It wasn’t easy, but one learns to be thankful for small mercies. For any form of compassion. But now I’ve also seen you as someone else’s husband. You think you can keep us apart. But when you come to me, you bring part of her with you. And when you leave, you take part of me home. If we try to deny that, we’re denying part of ourselves. We can’t goon like this. It’s not–worthy. For either of us.”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “It’s up to you to make up your mind. You’re the man in the middle.”

  I looked down. And up again, but only after a long pause.

  “Button your blouse.”

  Almost in surprise she looked down at her breasts, and halfheartedly drew the two lapels of the blouse closer, a small cynical smile on her face.

  “Button it up, I said!”

  “Don’t be silly, Martin.”

  All of a sudden I was blind with rage. I jumped up and pulled her from her chair by the arm. Her wine-glass fell on the floor and rolled along the soft carpet. When I grabbed her open blouse to close it with force, it tore. And then I became wild, with a violence I’d never suspected in myself. Grabbing the thin muslin blouse again, I went on tugging and tearing until I’d ripped it completely off her; and then, throwing her to the ground, I took her forcibly, raping her. Only after some time it slowly dawned on me that she hadn’t put up any resistance, that she’d yielded quite passively to whatever I wanted to do to her. For a moment the discovery made me even more furious than before. Suddenly, as I climaxed, she began to cry. The only time she’d ever cried in my presence. Not loudly: deep, smothered sobs shuddering through her while she lay biting on the second joint of her forefinger trying to control it.

  Withdrawing from her I turned away to readjust my clothes. I went to the bathroom. From the door I looked back. She was lying motionless on the carpet, her knees still drawn up and wide open. Like, once before, Bernard’s wife Reinette.

  In the bathroom I scrubbed myself as if to rid me of every sign and stigma of her. But I knew it was useless. I was addicted to her more totally than to any other woman in my life: with the exception of Elise in those early days of our love, before our marriage.

  Later I went back to her, and took her to the bedroom. Until deep in the night we lay together, talking, in a close embrace without any sexual overtones. The storm had subsided. In the deep desolation following it we were able to discuss everything down to the very bone.

  It was the critical moment of our relationship. She made it very clear, but without any bitterness or insistence; with weary compassion only. I had to choose. I had to go back to Elise the next morning and talk it out with her. And then I would have to either get divorced or leave Bea. In the defenceless, small hours of the night it all appeared so clear, so simple, so obvious. I would make a decisive move. And then we would start anew, together.

  But when I came home the next morning, Elise awaited me with the news that Dad was dying. In a strange way that suspended everything. When I came back after the funeral, each of us seemed to be waiting for the other to refer to the matter again. But neither of us did. The one moment when it had been possible, had passed. Now we allowed it to go on as before. Perhaps each of us secretly blamed the other for it. At the same time we were grateful for the reprieve. One cannot live with high drama day after day.

/>   If I think back now, remembering the disconcerting old man in the wood on the farm that weekend, I find it easier to understand his fantastic story: how he’d followed the Momlambo and received the decorated stick from her. And her message. If you really want the Momlambo to come to you, and if you want her to sleep with you under one kaross and remove her inciyo for you, you must first kill your father in your own heart.

  That night I’d spent with Bea: and Dad died.

  Every man has his own Momlambo. You must wait for your own whirlwind.

  Shortly after eleven the police van stopped in the farmyard in a cloud of dust. The Black constable went round to let Mandisi out; then returned to the front where he sat waiting beside the White driver. Unmanacled, Mandisi went up the hill to the small enclosure of aloes. Ma and Louis and I followed at a distance. She was walking as erect and as fast as always, but when we reached the top she was too breathless to speak; and I’d never seen her look so old.

  From the huts two rows of people approached, men and women separately. There were no children. (Nor virgins, Ma explained, since death was still taboo to their eyes.) They were singing as they came, those men and women in their separate rows, deep and clear voices like earth and water. And all the time the wind was blowing, more violently than before.

  Inside the aloe hedge Mandisi was waiting on a rock close to the raw dry mound of the newly dug hole, his back turned to the others who crowded together on the far side of the grave. We stood farther back, in the entrance to the kraal, as we didn’t really have any part in what was happening.

  All the time the ceremony lasted, Mandisi remained sitting with his back to his people, looking far away to the hills where the clouds were beginning to gather; apparently unconcerned with whatever was taking place behind him. And while the hole was being filled up, he walked off alone, first to the huts to take leave of his children; then down to the yard and the waiting van. By the time we came back the van had already left with him. The line of dust was still visible up the side of the hill, beyond the flamboyants; soon scattered by the wind.

  4

  LUNCH WAS SERVED early. As usual, the table was overloaded.

  “It’s impossible to eat so much, Ma!” I protested as she handed round the heaped plates.

  “There’s a long road ahead, sonny. And one never knows when we’ll all be sitting down to a meal together again.”

  As it turned out, it was the last meal we ever had together on the farm. (A month later, when Ma had to be fetched, I was in the middle of an important transaction and couldn’t leave, so Elise had to go to the farm to help Ma with the final arrangements and the packing and to bring her home.) Inevitably, there was a sense of ritual about it, although I deliberately tried not to weigh the atmosphere down with references either to past or future. For the matter was concluded and we owed it to ourselves to make as little fuss as possible over it.

  But dishing up the dumplings (Ma always knew exactly what to prepare for me) she said: “If I knew a month ago what I know now, it would have knocked me out on the spot.”

  “In the final analysis it’s for the good of the country, Ma,” I tried to mollify her. “We must be prepared to make sacrifices.”

  “You’re fortunate,” said Ma quietly, a malicious glint in her blue eyes. “You get other people to make your sacrifices for you.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  The plates were removed; coffee was served.

  “And when do you want me to pack up my caboodle?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you know. There’s no great hurry.” I tested the coffee with my lips; it was scalding. “But of course one can’t postpone it indefinitely either.”

  Louis pushed away his chair. “I’ll go and load the car while you finish your coffee.”

  Ma and I remained at the table. Only banalities remained to be said. But behind our banter and our irrelevancies lay the weight of lives and generations, fear, bewilderment and silence. Everything we would never be able to pack up and cart away.

  When Louis returned from outside at last, loitering very obviously on the doorstep, I also got up.

  “My goodness,” said Ma. “We haven’t even said grace.”

  “Ag, it doesn’t matter.”

  From the bedroom I collected my few odds and ends. Wallet, keys, the pistol. On an impulse I stopped in the passage and took the key to Dad’s study from the hook. Leaving through the front door so Ma wouldn’t see, I went down to the small outbuilding behind the dairy. While I was struggling to manoeuvre the heavy hand-carved chair through the door, Louis said outside:

  “Let me help you.”

  “I’ll manage.” With a final effort I heaved the chair through the opening.

  He took it nevertheless. Annoyed, I pulled it away, knocking it against the wall beside the door. One of the arm rests came loose.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” I cried.

  “I only tried to help you, Dad.” He examined the chair. “It’s not serious. We can easily fix it again at home. Now let me carry it for you.”

  “I told you I can manage!”

  “You’re not supposed to handle such heavy objects.”

  “For God’s sake, man, I’m not an invalid!”

  I picked up the chair. He took the other side. For a few moments we stood glaring at one another. I felt a furious urge to wrench it away from him; but the humiliating thought occurred to me that he might be stronger than I. And the chair might be damaged further. Breathing deeply, and avoiding his eyes, I began to follow him as he led the way across the uneven, stony slope to the yard where the Mercedes was waiting.

  Ma watched in deadly silence as we loaded it on the back seat, not without considerable effort. She appeared even more erect than usual, tall and gaunt and grey.

  Louis had already opened the driver’s door when I took him by the arm. He was taking too much for granted.

  “I’ll drive,” I said.

  “But how can you see without your glasses?”

  “I’ve been going without them for two days. One’s eyes get used to it.”

  “But suppose something happens, sonny?” asked Ma, dissatisfied.

  “I know the Mercedes and I know the road.”

  “You know I can drive, Dad. Right through the war in Angola —”

  “Now say goodbye to Grandma and get in on your side.”

  Her long, thin, strong arms; her old dry mouth pressed against mine. An impression of bones. Even our greeting became an affirmation of death. All the many dead in the dried earth, the fresh grave, the inescapable deaths of the future. More finally than anything I’d experienced over the weekend, I was aware of an end in our goodbye kiss: the end of everything capable of ending. I was aware, too, of the silence.

  In the yard nothing moved. The ducks and chickens were silent. Even the birds were silent in the wild-fig tree. The dogs had stopped their frantic barking and were standing by the water tank, waving their tails, their large open mouths slavering. No sound came from the dairy, or from the huts on the hill, or anywhere else. Even the wind had died down momentarily. Deep down in the hollow of the valley, where the two rows of hills met, the dark thicket of the wood lay in utter silence.

  Nothing determines an end so fatally as a beginning. But I don’t think that is why I have not written about the beginning of my relationship with Bea yet. I had hoped it would prove to be irrelevant; I’d hoped to be able to say enough about her without having to return to that first night; to that first morning. But I realise now that I have no choice. It no longer depends exclusively on myself. It simply has to be written down, with everything related to it. Even if it means a return to Bernard.

  Arriving at Aunt Rienie’s flat that evening, in one of the charming old-fashioned buildings in Parktown, high above the snarling traffic of Jan Smuts Avenue, it was already overflowing with people. From my experience of her previous birthday parties I’d expected it: that crowd of strangers drawn together from all over the country and
all strata of society. God knows how and where she’d met them all.

  In her youth Aunt Rienie must have been a beauty; and, in addition to the three husbands she’d buried one after the other, she’d often hinted slyly at a staggering succession of lovers in her life, even now that she was in her late seventies. I know that once, when she was seriously ill, she summoned Bernard to her bedside (for among all her friends and acolytes he’d always been her favourite) and made him promise that, in the event of her death, he would remove the hatbox filled with old letters, hidden behind the bottles of Roodeberg in her wardrobe; he was given permission to read them if he so wished, but afterwards they had to be burnt before any of her five children could lay hands on them.

  The lounge, the balcony, the bedroom, the minuscule kitchen, even the bathroom was crammed with guests; the front door stood open, allowing people to spill from the flat into the interior of the impressive old building, down the staircase and even into the driveway. To the roar of the crowd was added loud music – not the sort of music one would expect at a party, but Vivaldi, Telemann, Scarlatti, Haydn. Incredibly, Aunt Rienie immediately located me in the throng.

  “Martin! I couldn’t wait for you to come.”

  Kissing one of her highly rouged cheeks I offered her the present I’d chosen for her, a Victorian brooch with nine small rubies, which she promptly pinned to her blue dress.

  “And where’s Bernard?”

  “He very badly wanted to come, Aunt Rienie. He kept it open until the last minute. But this trial is keeping him busy full-time and he had to do some urgent preparation for tomorrow.”

  “Oh what a pity.” Her disappointment was as immediate and as fleeting as all her quicksilver moods. “I specially invited a girl for him.”

  “She won’t have any problem finding another partner in this crowd.”

  “But that’s not the point, Martin. I chose her with the greatest of care. All right, I know I’m trying every year, don’t pull such a face. But this time I knew immediately: she’s just made for Bernard, it’s written in the stars. And she’s in the legal profession too.”