by Mark Behr
The sun disappeared behind the clouds heaping over Cathkin and Champagne. Someone called from downstream that the whisde had gone. Two Juniors passed close by the fort and Mervy called them to cross the stream and take a photograph of us. For an hour the clouds had heralded an afternoon thundershower. It was close. Dom and I placed our sculptures in the back of the fort on a ledge Bennie had carved in the roots of the poplar. Then we drifted towards where everyone was gathering on First Rugby Field. I watched the moving bank of cloud and recited:
Oh the dance of our Sister!
First, over the mountain-tops she peeps on the sly,
and her eyes are shy, and she laughs softly.
From afar she beckons with one hand;
and her bracelets shine and her beads glitter;
softly she calls
We paused to look at what Sarel Raubenheimer s gang had done to the fort of Harding and Reyneke. It was the biggest of the structures, made of massive logs, square, almost like a log-cabin, though the walls were not insulated and from certain angles you could see right in. The new occupants — again Standard Sevens — were insulating it with grass, and Lukas teased that they were copying our idea. Harding and Reyneke s fort looked good, quite perfect, though I did not like the location, preferring ours, removed, on the outskirts of the village.
By the time everyone was gathered on First Rugby Field the clouds had stacked into black masses and we ran the hill from the river, up past the orchards. Looking back you could see the rain waving in dramatic grey blankets down the mountains. Winds rushed in from nowhere, lifting dust and winters leaves into flurries. I called for the others to look at the coming rain and as we ran they laughed as I continued:
The big-game chase from the plains,
they dam up on the hilltop
they flare their nostrils
and they swallow the wind
and they stoop, to see her delicate prints on the sand
The small-folk deep beneath the ground hear the swish of her feet
and they crawl closer and sing softly:
Our sister! Our sister! You came! You came!
And I threw my arms into the air as though for a dance. I was about to continue when Buys called from behind:
‘De Man. Stop looking for attention and get a move on.’
We ran, my neck ablaze, my hands tightened into fists, up the hill. I did not look back. We reached the school just as the first heavy drops puttered down on the corrugated iron roof. From the veranda in the arches, we watched it come down, smelling the drops in the dust. Rain, hard, thunderous afternoon showers. Lukas and Dominic stood beside me. Lukas wished the deluge could be falling in the Eastern Cape. Lightning zig-zagged over V Forest — we covered our ears — and thunder rolled down the valley. In an animated voice, gesturing with my hands:
She informs the winds of the dance
and she invites them because the yard is wide and the wedding huge . . .
I stopped. From the corner of my eye I’d seen Buys approach to pass behind us. I dropped my arms.
‘De Man . . .’ he said, coming to a standstill. I turned around.
‘Ja, Meneer Buys?’
‘When are you going to live up to your name?’ he asks in Afrikaans.
He stood shaking his head, the huge Adam’s apple bobbing, his gaze was obliterating mine. I grasped at once what he meant and could kick myself for the moment of lapsed vigilance. His eyes remained on me. How was I to respond? It was not a question. Nor did I hear it as a statement. This was his fist in my face, disguised as eight words. He shook his head again and blew through his lips, from the movement of the Adam’s apple it seemed he wanted to add more. Instead he walked off, still shaking his head. I turned back to face the rain.
‘Ignore the bastard,’ Dominic said.
‘Sticks and stones . . .’ said Lukas.
We watched as the enormous drops burst against the quads paving. I mulled over Lukas’s balmy words. It was the same refrain
Niklaas Bruin had always cried at us when we were teasing him. I wanted to say to Lukas that he was wrong — him and Bruin — that I preferred, infinitely, sticks and stones. But I shut up, resentment at Buys blurring my vision. I had heard my name said into abstraction, into an idea separate from me, existing now for ever in the distance behind me, moving away, beyond my grasp, down the veranda on Buys’s lips. I thought of him going now to his wife. In their bedroom. Kissing her.
After a few minutes, Dominic said he was going to practise in the conservatoire. He left, saying we’d meet at choir. Lukas asked whether I wanted to go with him to the dairy. He and Mr Walshe were expecting an old and very ill cow to calve any day. I did want to see the cow calve, badly, but I had no further inclination to speak — something I would be bound to do if I accompanied him to the dairy. I said no, I had Latin and Afrikaans homework to finish. Lukas left to fetch his raincoat and I lingered for a while on the veranda. Cassandra’s foal it was exciting seeing birth, must also see calf, Dr Taylor, will not think of it, will be, he loves me, in my hands, fuck you Buys, fuck you, die, lightning strike you, turn to salt pillar or black charred acacia in Mkuzi after storm water and red mud and black tree so sad so scared, Bok on Vonk, Bokkie’s wig Aunt Lena’s on the twig, no, stop, kill you — and instead watched the rain dam up on the grass in front of the arch against which I was leaning.
7
Caught by the paw in the wire of a poacher’s snare, the sow’s struggle was written with deep furrows into the earth, tufts of wiry hair clinging from branches and blood spurted against yellow stalks metres around. Bok and Jonas found her there in the footpath, her body still warm, two piglets trying to suckle from the dusty teats of their mother’s carcass. And Jonas pointed to her front paw: blood was congealed only where the wire had cut into her flesh. High above the cut, closer to the sow’s thigh, the skin itself hung in loose slithers with strips of meat showing through in red. This was where she had tried to chew off her own leg.
Bokkie mixed powdered milk with sterilised water and I fed the piglets from a baby’s bottle. I named them for Jonas’s wife and daughter: Nkosasaan and Nkosi.
After three days the little tummies began heaving and once the diarrhoea began Bokkie coaxed me into keeping the little hogs in a box outside the kitchen. On the morning of the fifth day, when I arrived as usual to give them the bottle, I found the little bodies stiff, the grey skins covered in blotches of dried green excrement.
We buried them on one side of the rockery and Bokkie helped erect a cross made of two bamboo cylinders tied together with a strip from her kitchen rags.
8
From up there I could watch it come down past the empty auditorium windows. Aloe leaves became bowls, sent waterfalls into the next, in terraces, farther down and down to below window level at the plants’ bases, obscured from view. The rain enclosed the valley in a white haze from halfway down the orchards. If one didn’t know, one could not guess the existence of either the river, its poplars, the hills or V Forest. The school was wrapped in veils of water.
There was no one else there. Ever. There I could always be alone. Doesn’t anyone else in this stupid school read? We were not allowed around the dormitories during the day, yet for some reason my presence up in the library was never questioned. When someone walked by and saw me, I supposed they assumed the books justification enough. I could not imagine being banished from the library. As public a thoroughfare as it was, the fact that no one else used it madeit my own. From March there had been, in addition to the encyclopaedias, another reason for being up there: if he walked through we may exchange a few words or just a quick smile or a wink. I no longer thought of him as Mr Cilliers. He was just him. Or, without ever saying it aloud: Jacques.
Lightning flashed, struck somewhere down the valley with a whip-crack. Thunder. As if on cue, the drops beating on the roof became deafening. I could watch it for hours, but knew that insufficient reason or excuse to be up there. I turned and stood on a chair. Took d
own C from the line of red leather-bound encyclopaedias. The previous year, after the July holiday with Dr Taylor, I decided to read the entire twenty-five volumes. A—Z. The project was taking longer than I’d thought. I opened at the pressed orange leaf. Soon I may skip past C and just begin on D. Couldn’t sit on C for the rest of the year. Sniffed at the dry parchment. My bitten fingernails were encrusted with the brown and yellow of river clay: Caledonia, name applied by the ancient Romans to upper Britain . . . Wonder how the Romans knew about Britain? Must remember to look it up. I skipped a long section in italics. Italics, so I had come to understand, more often than not contained information of such detail it bored me . . . In poetic and rhetorical usage the name is a synonym for Scotland. That’s interesting. Why on earth not keep it Caledonia; that’s so much more fun to say than the short — Scotland — which is nothing more than a muffled dog’s bark. The name rolled around in my mouth. I savoured the different accents and possibilities: Ca-le-do-ni-a; Ca-le-donia; Caledo-nia. All endlessly better than what it’s called now.
Calendar: System of measuring time for the needs of civil life, by dividing time into days, weeks, months, and years. Calendar divisions are based on the movements of the earth (see EASIH: Motion) and the regular appearances of the sun and moon. I skip a section . . . Calendars, Ancient: The ancient Babylonians had a luni-solar calendar of twelve lunar months of thirty days each, and they added extra months when necessary to keep the calendar in line with the seasons of the year. Again I skipped what seemed boring . . . The Roman calendar . . . About 7th Century BC had ten months with 304 days in a year that began with March. Began with March! Crazy . . . skip . . . Calendar, Gregorian. The Gregorian calendar, or New Style calendar, was slowly adopted throughout Europe. It is used today throughout most of the Western world and Asia . . . The British adopted I January as the day when a new year begins. The Soviet Union adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918. . . The Gregorian calendar is also called the Christian calendar because it uses the birth of Jesus Christ as a starting date. Although the birth of Christ was originally given as 25 December, I BC, modern scholars now place it about 4 BC. Crazy . . . So, Christmas is not Christmas by a long shot. I must remember to tell Ma’am, though I’m sure she already knows. The Jewish calendar: The starting point of Hebrew chronology is the year 3161 BC, the estimated date of the creation of the world described in the Old Testament. I wonder if Mervyn knows? I had no idea the Jews have their own calendar. Ridiculous. Who’s stupid enough to say the world’s only about six thousand years old? As stupid as saying the world was created in six days. Forgive me, sweet Jesus, Father, but it does seem unlikely and I think it may be meant sort of symbolically, even though all the ministers and the teachers and Bok and Bokkie say it is true literally. Skip . . . Islamic calendar . . . In the Middle East the Islamic calendar is used extensively. It has a starting date of 16 July, AD 622, the day after the Hegira . . . Skip . . . For information on the Aztec calendar and the Mayan calendar, see aztec and maya. See also calendar reform; church calendar. So, who decides what’s what if everyone has their own years, dates, times? About to skip on to Calendar Reform, I heard him, over the racket on the roof, clear his throat. I looked up from the book. Found his smile.
‘It’s rather wet, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said, my spirits lifting. ‘Lovely the rain, don’t you think?’
‘In the mood for some starfishing?’ He asked, and I laughed. Nodded. He said nothing more, only inclined his head down the passage. He showed me with his fingers to wait ten minutes before following.
I could not take in another word. We had done it only once during the day, and that was on tour. Here I’d never seen the inside of his room in daylight. Choir was half an hour away. We’d have to hurry. God.
Sitting, encyclopaedia open on my knees, I recreated pictures of him as he was the afternoon in the hotel. We were off from concerts for two days. Dominic — who always had to be placed in host families with a piano — remained in Oudtshoorn to use the free time for practice. ‘Come with us, Webster,’ he invited Dom more than once, ‘we re going to a magical place.’ And Dominic, as tempted as he was, said he had to stay. It was the year he sat his Grade Eight piano exams, and he wanted to do well.
The night before we had left Dominic told me he was sure Cilliers was interested in boys.
‘No, Dom, I don’t think so.’
‘Well, what are you going to do if he comes on to you?’
‘What would you do?’
‘I’ve told you and you called me a pig!’ We laughed and we kissed and I swore I’d tell him if Cilliers tried anything, knowing I wouldn’t.
We drove to the West Coast in an Audi borrowed from our host family. He said he was taking me to a place he had not been himself, though friends said it was beautiful and very quiet. As we approached the building we were going to stay in I thought he must be mistaken: it bore no resemblance to my idea of a hotel. It was nothing like the Elangeni, the Blue Waters or Malibu that towered over the ocean and where Aunt Lena and Uncle Joe stayed on their annual Durban vacations. The Paternoster, forlorn in the fynbos above a flat sea, looked more like a dilapidated and discarded two-storey house that had only been renamed hotel but not revamped to resemble one. There were no other cars. Were we to be the only patrons? I tried to hide my disappointment at the dull building without gardens, no Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs in the tiny gravel parking lot, no fountains, no lifts, no porters running to fetch luggage. I had pictured tall buildings, modern glass windows that slid rather than folded open, Cape Malaywaiters in black waistcoats carrying cool drinks on silver trays, a huge room high above the ocean with room service and fresh white towels in the bathroom every day. I said it was beautiful — and wonderful that we were so close to the beach. It could be that he read my face, for he smiled and said it was very European and quaint. The word, in and of itself, made me warm to the place. It will still be quaint, I told myself, even if it doesn’t look very grand.
He took the suitcase from the back seat and we walked into the small foyer. The receptionist was a young Afrikaans woman who welcomed us with a burr — like the people from the Swartland — in her voice. He said I was his son and that we’d be staying two nights.
‘Oudtshoorn number plates, I see. I have family there.’ She smiled.
‘Pietermaritzburg,’ he answered. ‘This is a friend’s car,’ nodding his head.
‘Long way you’ve driven, hey! You must be exhausted!’ Heartiness glowed on her face.
He smiled and nodded, pursing his lips in agreement.
‘Good that you came today,’ she said. ‘Lots of space because it’s middle of the week. You’re probably going to be alone unless some lost tourist shows up. And were expecting crayfish from the boats.’
‘Good, good, good,’ he answered and winked at me.
‘Your first visit to Paternoster?’
‘To the Cape, for him,’ he said, gesturing to me. ‘His first time in die kolonie.’
I had of course been in the Cape the previous year, though clearly this was not the time or place to remind him.
The receptionist chuckled: ‘Have you, Menere, had Cape Crays? Nothing like Cape Crays I tell you.’
‘No, no. We haven’t have we . . . son?’
I shook my head, not knowing how to respond.
‘Single or double, Menere?’
‘Double’s fine, your nicest room, please,’ he said and roughed my hair. ‘If he kicks I’ll let him sleep on the floor.’
I grinned at her. She asked whether she couldn’t send up a klong with an extra mattress just for in case: ‘The carpets are threadbare and the nights are cold! Be warned!’
‘What do you say, Karl?’ he smiled at me. ‘Would you like a mattress, or are you going to lie still?’
‘I’ll lie still . . .’ I said, holding his smile.
He looked at her and said no, really, it wasn’t necessary to send up a mattress. She handed him our room key and sugge
sted we tell her in advance if we wanted crayfish for dinner. With the place as quiet as it was, there were no plans for dinner and they’d really only be cooking for us. I took the suitcase and we started up the stairs. She called after us: ‘You must take a drive or a walk to Tietiesbaai. This way,’ and she pointed over her shoulder, ‘there’s a dust track down the coast. Not flower time, but still stunning.’
He gave me the key. Upon reaching our room he nodded for me to go ahead. I unlocked the door, glanced up at him. The place was dark and a hint of mould hung in the air. From the door he still watched me as my hand glided along the wall feeling for the light switch. A thick blue carpet covered most of the wooden floor. A four-poster double bed stood with its foot-end towards the windows, which were hidden by heavy velvet curtains with a golden sheen. The bed’s cover was a patchwork in different patterns and hues of blue. On the one bedside table a radio-alarm clock flashed electronic time and above a huge antique dressing table hung an oval mirror, embossed in gold leaf. I turned back to the door. He inclined his head, indicating he wanted me to go into the bathroom. Had he indeed guessed my initial scepticism? Was he letting me look it over to tell him it was to my liking? The washbasin had small bottles of shampoo and neatly packaged bars of soap. On wooden racks above the white enamel bath and toilet were stacks of neatly folded white towels.
‘Does it please you, sir? May I come in, sir?’ he asked from the door.
I laughed and said: ‘Of course you may, Klong.’
The door closed behind him. He smiled as he passed me. He laid the suitcase on the bed, sat down beside it, and looked up at me. I grinned and looked away, my eyes settling on the drapes.