by Mark Behr
‘Of course, Ma’am, I’d love to.’
‘Okay, and who will speak against it?’
‘De Man . . . let De Man speak . . . Karl... He’s the best speaker.’ I had already anticipated that it may come to this and shook my head. As much as I liked debating, I would not speak as Dominic’s opponent. I knew I could probably beat anyone in debate — barring perhaps Niklaas Bruin. But talking publicly against Dominic seemed like sacrilege.
‘Come on, De Man. Kom aanf
‘Doesn’t want to speak against Dame Dominique Defarge . . .’ I swung around in my chair and glared at Radys.
‘Okay, pipe down.’ Ma’am was irritated. ‘Honestly, what has gotten into you boys today?’ Now her voice altered, was kind and generous: ‘Karl, if you don’t want to do it, who would you suggest?’
‘Mervyn,’ I said. ‘He’s good. Or Niklaas, but he agrees with Dominic so he can’t speak against him. Can you, little Niklaas?’ ‘Karl.’ Ma’am glowered at me.
‘Mervyn?’ She enquired: ‘Would you like to do it?’
‘Yes! . . . Merv! . . . Clemence-Gordon . . . You’re our man.’
‘Is it going to be just in front of our class, Ma’am,’ Mervyn asked, ‘or in front of the whole school?’
‘The whole school,’ everyone called.
‘No, I’m afraid it will be only our class. No politics allowed in school. I could lose my job.’
‘If it’s just our class, I’ll speak,’ Mervyn replied. The class clapped. When we walked from the room for lunch, Bennie slapped me hard between my shoulder blades: ‘Why are you letting an Englishman — a Jew — speak for our side. You would have beat Dominic hands down.’
‘I didn’t feel like speaking, Bennie, that’s all. And Mervy’s your friend. Why didn’t you speak if the whole thing’s so important?’
‘You know I can’t debate, De Man. You can . . . That’s the difference. Verraaier . . .’
I fell into line for lunch behind Dominic. I felt sorry for him. The whole class seemed to have turned against him — barring Niklaas Bruin, and who wanted that little sissy on your side, anyway. In the silence of the queue I thought of what Bennie had just called me. What else might lie behind his words? Was he speaking only about todays class? Did he suspect or know something? Could he possibly guess about Mr Cilliers? No, Bennie was too thick; probably didn’t even know about Dominic and me. Was it about last year? Was it possible that Almeida had said something, after all, about my treason?
After lights-out, for the first time in weeks, I went to Dominic’s bed. We didn’t speak, or even really touch other than where our bodies met. For a long while, as I hoped he could sense how I wanted him to feel better, I held him, got him to rest his head on my chest. I wished he would keep out of arguments when he knew his would always be the unpopular view. But I knew it would be to no avail: he was his father and mother’s son and Dr and Mrs Webster seemed to care less what anyone thought of them. Didn’t they know how difficult they were making his life by teaching him to always be against everything, even things that didn’t matter?
I couldn’t prevent myself from going stiff, and soon his hand found my erection. He lifted his head and kissed me. I reached down for him. I longed to be on top of him again as I’d been the night in his bedroom in Saxonwold. When he’d asked with his Condensed Milk breath and I’d slowly obliged and pushed it into him. What we did there, and a few times later on tour took turns at, would be too noisy for the dorm. Even as I tried to forget, each moment in G with him remained frightening, the spectre of exposure and terrible shame always entangled in and almost overwhelming my pleasure and desire. Once we’d both climaxed — of late kissing deeply at the right moment to keep each other quiet — we wiped our bellies and hands on the seam of his locker’s curtain. A whispered goodnight and I crept back to F, feeling guilty and afraid. At least for a while.
17
I recognised Bokkie’s thin blue aerogram even before Uncle Charlie called my name. At the dormitory door, amongst the others, I waited to see whether there was another for me, perhaps from Alette. Uncle Charlie teased Lukas that his pink envelope reeked of perfume. We called for Lukas to do push-ups. Uncle Charlie shook his head and a sssss, tsss, tsss ran through the crowd as he handed over the letter.
I stared at the aerogram. The school’s address was slanted diagonally across the envelope. I cannot, cannot believe she keeps doing it like this when I’ve told her repeatedly it’s out of fashion! I ripped open the narrow flaps I knew her tongue had licked, her fingertips folded over and compressed.
Dan Pienaar Drive 21
Amanzimtoti
15 August 1976
This one again, too! It’s out of date, I had told her. There’s a new rule; it’s different now; you start each successive line directly below the previous.
By now so angry it was a near impossibility for me to concentrate on her words:
Dear Karl
Thank you for your lovely letter about the tour. We’re so grateful to the Lord for bringing you back safely. And proud of you for everything you are doing and that you’re so lucky to see the whole country. I know Lena and Bernie badly want to see the Cape as well. Maybe we’ll go one day. You are so privileged and I hope you’re working hard.
We knew a Samuel Erasmus in Oljorro, and Mumdeman says he is the brother of the people you stayed with in Cape Town. Samuel Erasmus’s wife Betta is on that photograph we have of me and Aunt Siobhain with John Wayne when he came to makethe movie in Arusha. Nice woman. She and Sanna Koerant were on the ship with us when we came out and old Samuel Erasmus was the first to escape by plane. That’s where Daddy and Uncle Michael got the idea. Mumdeman says the Erasmuses were on the trek north and one brother struck it rich on the Lupa gold fields; the Erasmus brother you met is from that side of the family who were cowards and left Tanganyika early, btfore things really started looking bad. They were business people, not farmers. Farmers always stay till the last. Mumdeman says she heard from Sanna Koerant that Johan Erasmus went into the army; hot-shot general now. He became a Broederbonder: the right pedigree and money. And too good for those of us who came out poor. Kamstig elite and married the opera star. But Mumdeman says Sanna Koerant says the would-be opera star was no Joan Sutherland! Stinking rich, stripped , Tanganyika of its riches and then fled bfore anything had even changed. At least we stuck it out to the last. Came out with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Mumdeman says you must ask her about them when you see her again. Has lots of stories she got from Sanna Koerant. Sanna had a stroke in the middle of June, they don’t know if she’ll make it.
Bernie is studying hard for her matric exams. I’m so grateful that she has stopped watching TV You know, she used to sit and watch the test pattern btfore six o’clock when it started and then she would stay in front of that Mng until the test pattern came on again at eleven. She’s applying to SAA but I tell her she’ll have to do something about her weight. R30for her matric farewell dress. Where the money must come from I do not know. Lena is doing well and just plays her sport. She’s the only Std 8 in the first netball team and the coach thinks she’ll make the Natal team next year. Goal Defence. Bok’s business is not going so well at the moment. Because the bantus are rioting and going on there’s less interest from overseas in the curios and he’s thinking of going into insurance. It has become impossible to get stock from Angola and Mozambique, because Bok’s regular sources have disappeared in the wars. It’s a pity, because we need specially the musical figurines from Mozambique that have always been so popular. Bok has taken samples to the Zulus near Empangeni to see if they can copy those.
I’ve asked Mrs Lategan to keep all Leon’s Port Natal uniforms for you next year.
Groot-Oom Klaas showed up here on Tuesday and I gave him lunch before he went off again. Filthy and hadn’t had a bath in months. I let him sit outside in thegarden and tried to find out what was wrong with him hut he doesn’t talk much, looks at me as if I’m the mad one. He asked about you an
d I said how proud we were of you being in the Berg and that you had toured to the Cape and are going to Europe in December. He said he was hiking up to the Transvaal because it’s now getting warm up there again and then he just left. Aunt Lena may try getting him into rehab again if she sees him somewhere in Klerksdorp.
Bok and I are going shooting at Poinsettia this afternoon. We have a competition against Durban North.
It’s only a few weeks before Parents’Weekend, and we can’t wait to see you. We’ll be staying with Uncle Gerrie and Auntie Babs on the farm. I don’t think Bernie will be coming because she has to study for the trial exams.
Work hard, dear child, because remember: they can take everything away from you except your education. I’m ending this letter now, but never my thoughts of you.
All our love
Bok, Bernie, Lena and Bokkie
My eyes were coals seared to the trembling aerograms incorrect address format. Why can’t you listen to me! I know what I’m talking about. Know, I’m clever, ashamed of you, hate you. Eyes squeezed shut I fell back onto my mattress, turned over, pressed my face into the pillow and crumpled the letter in my fist. Damn you, I will not come home at the end of the year, damn you, damn you, Bokkie.
18
He was ten. He was standing in the passage dressed in school uniform with his suitcase in his hand, ready to start walking to school. His sisters were already halfway down the driveway. His father came walking down the passage and the boy looked up. The father placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was a firm grip. He spoke to the boy softly. He said many things while he looked the boy in the eyes. He said: ‘If you ever, ever, ever so much as think of doing that again, I will kill you.’
19
He ordered a bottle of Boland white wine. One drinks white only with chicken, fish and seafood, he told me; red wine only with red meat. Never err on your order or your etiquette.
With no one else there, it had seemed the small dining room was laid out for us alone. He allowed me a full glass — my first not sipped surreptitiously from half-empties in the kitchen with Lena and cousin James.
He showed me the fish-knife and fork; explained that cutlery is used from the outside, inward towards the plate. I said I knew, that that’s the way my parents ate in Tanzania. I said I also knew that the napkin is unfolded from the moment one is seated. Tipping the soup bowl away, rather than towards, we had been taught by the school in Standard Four, before we went on our first tour. And do you know, he asked playfully, that if you drop the serviette, you don’t bend down to pick it up or dig around with your heel to find it; you simply ask the waiter for another? No, I smiled, I would have dived down and fetched it, so thank you, Jacques, for sharing your wisdom. A new world of stylish rules was opening itself to be used by me.
While nowhere as big or impressive as the hotel dining rooms I had been in with Aunt Lena and Uncle Joe, the Paternoster Hotel dining room was special in other ways. I sensed the chasmic difference between being in a hotel with Bokkie’s sister and her rich husband, and being on the quiet West Coast with Jacques. Paternoster was classy and romantic. Quaint. The Malibu in Durban was a glossy, plastic and superficial holiday resort for the nouveau riche. While Bernice, Lena and I liked Aunt Lena — who had a great sense of humour and showered us with gifts — you didn’t need a degree to see that Uncle Joe knew as much about class as a cat of saffron, spending thousands and thousands of rands on dumb racing pigeons. Uncle Joe was a self-made man. He had become big as a building contractor for the Western Transvaal mines — even thoughhe only had Standard Six. Aunt Lena said he had never read a book in his life and that’s why he smirked and made snide remarks whenever I read on the beach. Despite my spending half the day body-surfing, kicking ball or playing beach-bats with him and Lena, when I said I wanted to take a break to read he almost flipped and said he couldn’t believe I hadn’t outgrown my girlish habits. How could a boy as tall and strong as me sit reading like a moffie on the beach? Lots of money, that he has, Aunt Lena said, but he’s clueless about anything beyond the building and mining professions. We all knew that Aunt Lena was the one with brains in that family. Not that book knowledge brought wisdom or joy; look where it had landed Uncle Klaas. But neither did wealth. For all their money, Uncle Joe and Aunt Lena’s marriage was held together only by the Brats. We distrusted Uncle Joe because Aunt Lena — and the whole Klerksdorp — knew he had strings of affairs, the latest with the little Matilda slut. And that he may be dabbling in illegal diamonds. His perpetual absences from home drove Aunt Lena half crazy. We all knew she would end up in Tara again. That she’d again received electric shock treatments to make her cope with the blues.
The blond receptionist doubled as our waitress. Before taking our order she joined us at table and had a glass of wine and a cigarette. She said she had grown up in Malmesbury. She had dreamt of going to secretarial college in Cape Town, but her parents hadn’t wanted her to leave the district so she stayed and found the job with the hotel. Her boyfriend of two years farmed nearby and they were to be married when she turned twenty-one.
She asked Jacques what he did. He answered that he was a high school teacher. When he said he taught Maths she snorted and said Maths had been her worst subject at school. I wanted to say that I too couldn’t do Maths — that to my mind it was the worst subject in the entire history of the world — but I caught myself, concerned that she would ask why he didn’t help me master the curse.
‘And the wife? Doesn’t she mind you two gallivanting in the Cape while she’s at home?’
‘My wife and daughter are in Maritzburg. He and I are on a trip so the girls can spend a little time on their own. You know how it is.’ ‘Oh yes, and don’t I just,’ she said. ‘Me and my girlfriends just love a night on the town. Alone, no boyfriends, nothing. Just us. It’s necessary, sometimes, just to catch your breath, you know. So, you have a daughter, too!’
He nodded. She said she wanted a daughter and wanted her to become a ballerina. A prima ballerina.
‘My sister is a ballet dancer,’ I said, catching his eye. A fleeting frown cautioned me not to colour the story too much.
‘Oh how wonderful! Does she do shows and stuff?’
‘She recently danced Gizelle for NAPAC,’ I said, nodding my head. ‘Oh I’d love my little girl to do ballet one day!’ she beamed, dragging on her cigarette. ‘Or gymnastics! Oh, there’s a farmer up the road with TV, and I went to watch the Olympic Games there the other night. And there was this little girl, Nadia something, you know all those communist names sound the same, who got ten out of ten for her exercises. The first time ever in the history of gymnastics. Did you see?’
‘Yes, she was very good,’ he spoke before I could continue. ‘Shall we get ready to order?’
While he ordered a starter, my eyes skimmed the menu. She asked whether I had decided. Emboldened by half a glass of wine, I glanced at her and asked, ‘You don’t happen to have any starfish on the menu, do you?’
‘Starfish? No klong, we don’t eat those in the Cape!’
‘You haven’t eaten starfish in a mayonnaise sauce?’ I asked, my mouth wide in mock surprise, hand over my chest, not looking at him.
She shook her head and smiled. ‘Never heard of it. There’s no meat on a starfish. You’ll break your teeth!’
‘Oh, but there are other, extraordinary nutrients in starfish!’ I said. ‘You lick it and suck it. It’s full of rare juices. You should try it!’
‘Sounds pretty strange to me,’ she said and looked at him.
‘Okay. Then I’ll have a prawn cocktail,’ I said.
She said it was a very good choice.
I kept my eyes on her as she turned on her heel and left the dining room. I grinned and looked him in the face. He was biting his bottom lip, nodding his head, smiling.
‘You know how to play the game, don’t you?’ He spoke through teeth still clasping his lip.
‘Maybe they have starfish only on the room-service menu,’ I s
aid.
He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. And I still recall how I glowed, blessed as if the doors had just swung open and life, real life, was beginning at last for me.
III
1
How different their scent and taste. Again, and again, how indistinguishable scent from taste. Could a word exist for that? One I did not know? When things smell like the palate of others or a taste is really the odour of another. Could it be that I, Karl De Man, had discovered another sense: the seventh perhaps? One that exists at the cusp of the tongue and the nose; at that point where sensations can no longer be distinguished. Him: the salted almonds, and if he had recently washed — which he usually had — Palmolive soap and English Leather aftershave. Aftershave, he claimed, prevented shavers rash. And afterwards, the sweat: at first salty then vaguely bitter in its aftertaste; if I went down there a second time it had changed to moss or humus mixed with saltpetre; and in the black hollows of his armpits — later damp: there, or in his shirt before it was removed, the smell of kakibush and horse. Dominic: rarely sweat, Brut beneath the arms where recently a few long hairs had begun to wisp; always sweet his sweat; soft the pale skin, barely an odour on the belly, and in the fine hair now starting to curl sometimes the faint smell of piss, shit and fresh sawdust.
We had developed a loose pattern in which Jacques was mostly the one to tell me to come and see him. Occasionally I went on my own accord and from the smile when he opened the door to my knock — sometimes just audible over music from the B&O in his room — I was sure I saw the special pleasure he took from my surprise visits. I tried keeping these to a minimum, going there uninvited no more thanonce a week. For Dominic and I, being together and planning nights was simpler and we generally stuck to Saturdays, though sometimes we slipped in a weekday session. Occasionally I went first to Dominic, then, after leaving him and donning my dressing gown in which I kept the key, headed for Jacques.