Rumours of Rain

by Andre Brink

  “Would you rather go back to your own flat?” I asked as we turned off the M1.

  She quickly looked at me, almost in despair. “Oh no, please don’t. I want to be with you.”

  Back in the security and the peaceful luxury of my own apartment, I took her in my arms to ask: “Are you sure it was only that demolished old building that upset you?”

  She shook her head, but offered no explanation.

  Like so many other times I removed the dark glasses from her eyes and put them away.

  “Good. Now I can see you.”

  “What is there to see?”

  “I wish I could look right into you.”

  “You won’t find any secrets there.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “I think so.” With a restless, anxious gesture she disengaged herself from my embrace and went to the bathroom; then she withdrew into the bedroom where she started brushing her hair in front of the large mirror, something she regularly did when she wanted to regain a grip on herself.

  I followed her.

  “It felt like an eternity without you,” I said.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go away right then.”

  I lay down on the bed. She went on brushing her shining, dark, short hair, rhythmically, slowly, deliberately, her head held at an angle.

  “I missed you,” she said. “I needed you.”

  “Why?”

  “Bernard.”

  “Is there any more news?”

  “Mere speculation. Protests and things. The Minister warned them he’d make them eat their words.”

  “And now?”

  “We can only wait, that’s all.” She stopped brushing, but still held the brush in her hand. I could see her face in the mirror. “Everything is being broken down. Something new every day.”

  “Dullabh’s Corner, you mean?”

  “Yes. And much more besides. It’s as if people have lost all reason. A passion for destruction. And no one really knows why. Whom the gods want to destroy—”

  “Don’t be so morbid.”

  “But how can it go on like this? Soon there’ll be nothing left. Just one vast hole.”

  “They don’t demolish without putting up new buildings.”

  “Camouflage for the holes, that’s all.”

  With two angry, jerking movements she drew the curtains, as if the light pained her. She was still deeply perturbed. Without looking at me, she undid the zip behind her back and peeled the dress over her head. The ageless gracefulness of the motion with which a woman strips off pantyhose, toes pointed, knee bent. Kicking the small black briefs from her ankle in a single nervous gesture. She was breathing deeply, more from tension than desire; but the two are related so subtly. Once again I was moved by the vulnerability of her body, the white pendulous breasts, the exposure of the dark nipples.

  “I wish you would hurt me,” she said unexpectedly, lying in my arms. “Just to help me forget about everything for a while. Even pain would be preferable to this.”

  I was conscious of the slowly increasing pressure in my chest. In a way I almost wished we could do without sex: I just wanted to hold her. Stroking her, I went on talking, trying to comfort her, aware of the unnatural tension in her body pressed against mine.

  “Have you been very lonely?” I asked.

  “Yes. I don’t know what it is, but for the first time in my life I sometimes feel I’ve lost all control. I don’t know where I’m going.”

  “Is it because of Bernard?”

  “Don’t talk about him now.”

  “So it is because of him?” The old, aggressive lust was throbbing back into me; my caresses became more insistent.

  “You were just as shaken by it.”

  “Did you see much of him, Bea?” I asked in her ear. “I mean, before he went underground.”

  “We were friends. You know it.”

  “And while he was in hiding?”

  “Oh Martin, don’t.”

  “Bea, did you and Bernard ever—” My voice became unsteady, and I stopped.

  “Suppose I said: ‘No’, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

  “I’ve got to know.”

  She moved her head against mine. Her breath was warm on my cheek. “You were the one who always said one had to keep the people in one’s life apart. Do you remember? When I spoke to you about Elise. Why don’t you allow it to me too?”

  “You’re trying to hide it from me.”

  “For God’s sake don’t go on asking. Don’t break down everything we have.”

  “You’re in love with Bernard. You’ve been in love with him since the first day you met him. Isn’t that so?”

  “I love you, Martin. I do. Really. Please come inside me now.”

  In a sort of frenzy she grabbed me and forced me into her, heaving and moaning and uttering animal cries. Something was quickened inside me too. I wanted to thrust myself violently into her, lose myself in her, and never come back to myself again. Perhaps it wasn’t even Bea I was trying to reach or crush, but something impossibly deep within her, behind her, beyond her. Bernard? Myself? I was desperately groping for something which had eluded me all my life, but it remained beyond my grasp. It was the same inexplicable panic which, later, beset me in the wood after the encounter with the old man. Equally unreasonable, equally wild. And when my orgasm started, I began to shake uncontrollably. It was as if something was smashed inside me. I doubled up in spasms of quite unbearable pain, gasping for breath. Then I lost consciousness. I thought I was dying.

  I don’t know how she managed to roll me off her. I don’t know how she went about arranging for an ambulance to take me to hospital, or how she kept her wits to contact Charlie so that he could get in touch with Elise. I don’t know how or when she collected her car from the demolition site at Dullabh’s Corner. All I heard afterwards was that I’d been close to death and that I’d been in a coma all day.

  Once I was allowed visitors again, she came to the hospital occasionally, staying very briefly, something restrained and remote about her. It was six weeks before I could return to my office. Then, obviously, we started meeting more regularly again. But I found it impossible to discuss that day with her, or anything connected with it. It was a strange experience, like seeing one another from afar and waving in despair, as on that first night in Aunt Rienie’s flat. It was too delicate to try and force anything. We would have to be very gentle with one another. And perhaps one day.…

  Then came the trial. And the mine riots at Westonaria. Our attempt to arrange a weekend together: at last, just the two of us, like that distant week in Ponta do Ouro. But the trip to the farm made it necessary to cancel our arrangements and postpone our weekend. Only temporarily, of course:

  “I’m terribly sorry, Bea. You know how much I’ve been looking forward to this weekend. But we can always do it later. Next week. Any time. We’re not-bound to anything.”

  “Of course.”

  “Please, Bea, you must believe me.”

  “I told you it didn’t matter.”

  “But I can hear you’re upset. Tell me what’s the matter.”

  The brief silence before she said: “There’s something I must discuss with you. But not on the telephone.”

  “I’ll see you on Tuesday.”

  “I know. It’s just – It seemed rather urgent, but I suppose it can wait. Anything can wait.”

  “Look after yourself. It’s only a few days.”

  Her sudden surge of passion: “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.” And then the smothered, final exclamation: “Oh, God,” before she rang off.

  8

  SOON AFTER WE’D crossed the Vaal River, just after leaving Orkney on the pitch-black road to Potchefstroom, I turned on the radio for the nine o’clock news. The weekend was over. Within an hour or so we’d
drive past Westonaria again. It was time I caught up with whatever had been happening in the world in my absence. But nothing had prepared me for the contents of that fatal broadcast.

  “Violence broke out on an unprecedented scale in Soweto and other Black townships in the vicinity of Johannesburg today. There is still considerable confusion about the causes of the riots, but according to reports received by the SABC large crowds of Black pupils marched out of their schools this morning and started rioting in different parts of the townships simultaneously. Different reasons have been advanced for their action, including the fact that they have allegedly been forced to take some of their school subjects through the medium of Afrikaans. The situation soon got out of hand and police reinforcements were rushed to the scene from other parts of the Rand and Pretoria. Many vehicles were stoned and numerous cases of arson have been reported. The police were forced to open fire to control the rioting children and make an end to the violence. The casualty figure is not known yet, but it has been reported that an undisclosed number of bodies, mainly of children, have been taken to mortuaries in the city, and according to our information the Baragwanath Hospital is overflowing with wounded and injured Blacks.…”

  Dazed with shock I sat listening to the commentator. Glancing towards Louis, I saw him staring fiercely ahead of him into the night. The wipers were whirring evenly, almost useless against the now blinding sheets of rain. It took a long time before the words on the radio started making sense again:

  “… police undertook raids in all major cities. It is not yet known how many people are being detained in terms of the security laws. Among the names for which the SABC has been able to obtain confirmation, are the following. In Johannesburg: Isaac Joseph Katzen, a student at the University of the Witwatersrand; Henry Dudley Johnstone, a press photographer employed by the Star; Beatrice Fiorini, a junior lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Wits; Buster Nkosana, a—”

  I didn’t link it with her immediately: the announcer had pronounced her name “Bitriss”, something she’d never been able to stomach, probably because it reflected on the only bit of security left to her. Not that it really mattered any longer.

  From the beginning I’d believed that she needed me, that I could help her, that I could offer her protection. But she’d insisted on being independent and alone. What she’d really needed, Bernard had given her: that was the only conclusion I could come to. They wouldn’t have arrested her without good reason: and she was now finding herself in the ripples of water caused by his own irresponsible actions.

  Louis was sitting beside me. I had no assurances about him. I could only wonder, and suspect, and fear. (For everyone like Bernard who’s silenced there are ten others to take his place.)

  But as far as Bea was concerned, it was concluded and clear. She had chosen. And whatever the price, I had to respect that choice. I could neither influence it nor help her any longer. I had no right to. (Ponta do Ouro: If ever I really desperately needed you. No, no, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all.) If it should become known that I’d been involved with her in any way, my own position would be in jeopardy. It should be clear to anyone that I couldn’t possibly interfere. It was the end for us. Something like a life sentence.

  If only I could find out what it was she’d so urgently wanted to discuss with me when we had that final conversation on the telephone. But we were doomed to incompleteness.

  9

  WHEN THE OLD-GOLD curtains in the hotel room are drawn, one isn’t even conscious of the rain outside. But whenever I leave off writing to go to the window, the whole city lies before me in its dull grey wetness, a blur, a smudge, as if I were shortsighted. Inside, one feels isolated from the world, protected from it; but it is an illusion. I have no defence against anything. Everything I’ve recalled through my writing surrounds me and threatens me. It wasn’t an “intellectual exercise” after all, nor “a form of mental massage”. All frontiers, all lines of demarcation, have been destroyed.

  I have finished writing. Or nearly. But I am not yet free.

  Incomplete and incompletable, like a gesture in a half-dark room, a man and a woman reaching out to touch, and missing by a hair’s breadth. Incompletable, because I have entered the situation.

  The evil-minded might say: So many lives destroyed. A land destroyed. Preposterous.

  In our time the notion of an apocalypse need no longer imply actual or active destruction. It is much more subtle. We have our Soweto, we have our Voortrekker Monument, we have thickets among hills on farms: but we no longer have hell.

  I’ll go on. I’ll survive. But I have lost everything who might have redeemed me. Ma and Dad and Theo. And Elise. Louis, who left our house after the ultimatum and never came back: leaving us only with the possibility, the certainty, of an inevitable telephone call one day; one night. Charlie. Bea. And the common denominator in our lives, Bernard.

  I have tried with so much care to keep all the elements of my life apart and intact. But now they merge and run into each other like streams of rain forming rivers and pools and dams. Pools covered by monstrous water-lilies that never stop growing. Dams in which one can sink and drown: with no hand, black or white, to offer help. Does one inevitably become the victim of one’s own paradoxes in the end? I’ve tried so hard, I’ve acted with the best of intentions. I’ve tried to remain loyal to the simple fact of my being here and the need to survive. Isn’t that enough?

  That night, on our way home, it was raining just like now. And it became harder every moment. What would happen if a small mechanical fault were to occur and the lights went off or the engine stopped? It was all quite unpredictable.

  Like a flood it washed over us, every yard of the way, with no end and no beginning, ahead for as far as one could see, behind for as far as we came from. All the rumours of months and years suddenly come true.

  Ceaselessly, irresistibly, it came down from the dark skies. In a blunted stupor I resigned myself to the thought that it would never stop again. I didn’t care any more. Let it go on, I thought, let it increase and grow worse and worse, a flood to soak the earth and uproot trees and split rocks; causing the red earth to run down the hills, streaming, streaming endlessly, red water as if the earth itself was crying, as if the earth was crying blood. Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika.

  Also available in Vintage

  André Brink

  DEVIL’S VALLEY

  ‘This is the work of a master story-teller’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘All the compulsion of a thriller … Once again the South African novelist returns to his great theme of journey into the interior, physical and spiritual, which enables him to examine man’s existence in largely hostile universe’

  The Times

  A chance encounter with a boy from Devil’s Valley rekindles in Flip Lochner a long-buried ambition to chart the history of this isolated community which lies to the north-east of Cape Town. Setting off with his tape recorder the 59-year-old crime reporter enters the world of a solitary white tribe, where a semblance of righteousness prevails by day and outright depravity by night. As lightning storms flay the parched valley, Lochner searches for the truth behind the folk legends. As each new story contradicts the last the certainties he has been trained to unearth simply evaporate. Then, his own obsession with the mysterious Emma draws him onto even more dangerous ground.

  ‘Freshly, vividly and differently imagined as anything in his work to date’

  Guardian

  Also available in Vintage

  André Brink

  ON THE CONTRARY

  ‘An immensely generous novel, vivid and adroit in its use of history’

  The Times

  Estienne Barbier, born in the Loire Valley in 1699, lays claim to service in the armies of the kings of France and Prussia, but he is an inveterate liar, and the truth is less glorious: irate husbands have made the Lowlands too hot to hold him, and he has deserted his pregnant wife to stow away for the Cape of Good Hope. An expeditio
n to the hinterland opens his eyes to the majesty of the African landscape and its wondrous animals and he is enchanted by rumours of a fabled city of gold. But he also begins to see clearly the sordid dealing that underlies the self-righteous pomposity of the East India Company. It is a vision that makes him powerful enemies. Taking cover on a remote farm, and energetically consoling sundry widows, Barbier finds himself, to his own surprise, fomenting rebellion.

  ‘On the surface On the Contrary is a picaresque historical novel…Underneath, of course, the novel is about today’s South Africa and the dilemmas facing people challenging the status quo. Brink has written a novel which entertains first and only later assumes a political significance. To rake over the old embers with such skill and ingenuity represents a considerable achievement’

  Sunday Telegraph

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781448113620

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2000

  4 6 8 10 9 7 5

  Copyright © André Brink 1978

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 1978 by

  W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd

  Minerva Edition 1994