Embrace

by Mark Behr

  I went to visit Jonas and Boy at the kraal. Jonas made the littlemasks and statues that Bok gave to Aunt Siobhain to sell to the curio shops in Durban. Boy made grass place mats, some of them decorated with small beads or interwoven with colourful pieces of wool. I grab a mask and a grass place mat and run away with Jonas and Boy calling after me to return their things. Jonas follows me as I run. He grabs me from behind and holds me by the shoulders.

  ‘No steal, Kal. Kal no steal.’ Shaking his head, frowning at me.

  I burst into tears and say: ‘Mina tella Baas Bok wena shaja Kal. Bok shaja wena.’

  He has done nothing more than grab me by the arm. Yet, I have threatened to tell Bok that he, Jonas, has hit me. I’m warning him that Bok will beat him. Bok will of course do no such thing, that much I know. But of my power and Jonas’s language — or rather our commanding variant of imperatives — I know enough, already at five, to threaten him even as I weep. Yet, the moment when I will grasp the meanings of our daily barbarism, the layers upon layers of brutal significance, as well as when I care enough to inquire with any measure of self-awareness about the boys and myself, that moment is a fixture telling beyond the pages bound in your hands. For now, Jonas glowers at me, leaves me with the quarry in mine. He goes back to the compound. I to Mbanyana. There I say to Bokkie that Jonas and Boy have sent gifts for us to hang from the walls of our reed lounge.

  Within days I’m back with the boys, though I never plunder art from the compound again.

  11

  Mervyn was the first to be taken from prep. He didn’t come back. Then Lukas. He didn’t return either. Then Bennie. Then me. I was taken by someone — I have no memory of whom it was, a teacher, a Senior, a prefect — into the night; it was said heavy snow was falling on the mountains. With jeans and long johns — after supper the whole school had been sent upstairs to don the long underpants — we wore T-shirts, our black polo-neck jerseys and grey bush jackets. Whomever it was that fetched me from the classroom led me through the lighted quad, past the dribble of guests arriving for the Juniors’ Wednesday evening performance. The Senior Choir was set to leave for Israel’s International Festival of Choirs. It was freezing. Instead of taking me through the concert hall, I was taken around the exterior of the building, to Mathison’s outside door. The curtains were drawn. I have no recollection of how I got inside, whether I entered after a knock, or whether a voice told me to come in.

  Mervyn, Lukas and Bennie’s backs stared at me. On the worn red carpet, they stood facing the desk. Mr Mathison told me to shut the door. I fell in beside Bennie. Was our dorm untidy? Had we been talking after lights out? My heart sank at the sight of the three men behind the desk. I could guess, but still hoped against hope that I was wrong. The gravity of whatever we had done was written into the three faces, the rigid postures. On the desk’s glass top, lay the bamboo cane, behind it in black leather, the Bible.

  Only Mr Mathison, from his seat at the desk, spoke. His voice was sparse, wounded, sad, no anger to be found there: ‘What the four of you have been up to is beneath language.’ He paused and stared pensively at the closed door. ‘Not even animals do this.’

  A flash of Miss Roos walking through the music hall.

  ‘How could you defile yourselves like this?’ It looked as if tears may at any moment stream down his cheeks.

  Through two closed doors, the sounds of applause reached into his office. The Juniors had obviously walked onto stage in the auditorium.

  ‘Where do you get this disgusting behaviour from? Do you have any idea what you have done? Nowhere in the world, in no human society, is this accepted. It is the gravest sin you can ever commit... God’s Word tells us — in the New and Old Testament, Mervyn — that your kind deserves death . .. This, you know, is why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. With fire and brimstone from heaven.’ He reached for the Bible. Opened it, paged, and read, something from somewhere about our kind deserving death. Suddenly his eyes brimmed behind the glasses, shining in the light. He cleared his throat and stood up. ‘In Sodom, every single person died except Lot and his daughters.’ Beneath my jersey and bush jacket trickles of sweat ran down my back, my sides. The headmaster was going to weep; he again cleared his throat; eyes still ready to spill tears. ‘Do you have any idea what this could do to your parents?’

  This could not be happening. This, Bok, Bokkie, dear Jesus what have I done?

  ‘If they ever find out, do you know what it will do to them? It will kill your mothers and shame your fathers to their last breath.’ He broke off, stared each of us in the face by turn. ‘I cannot, not for a moment, believe that a parent — any parent — would want a child who has dragged himself through such filth. It would be better for you to go to orphanages. That — Lukas, Mervyn, Bennie, Karl — that is where you will be sent to perish before you burn in hell for this unspeakable act.’ The Junior Choir was singing, ‘Me Who Melech Hakavod’, the soloist’s voice a thread sliding through wood of doors, the cracks between doors and floors, doors and their frames.

  Mathison came round the desk and stood in front of us. He was quiet for a while, seemed again to be searching our faces. When he spoke his tone had hardened; now he was angry; there was no longer a trace of tears. He spoke in English: ‘Let me give you an idea of the sort of life you are in for . . . There is a city in America . . .’ For the first time in my life I heard of a place called San Francisco; a place of perversion, sin and depravity; a place of satanic orgies and defilements: ‘That den of perversion is the Sodom and Gomorrah of the modern world. The kind of people who live there are the kind of people who do the unspeakable things you four have done.’ He paused and sat down on the edge of the desk. I blinked away tears. ‘But, as providence would have it,’ Mathison went on, ‘in God’s all-seeingplan — that place, that city of sin, has been built on the San Andreas Fault — a fault line that runs through that entire section of America. Do you know what a fault line is? It is a defect, a flaw in the earth’s crust, that rubs against itself for hundreds of years, and then, suddenly, it shakes and trembles and the earth quakes and falls in on itself. That fault line is the key that can unlock your understanding of what you have done. And why do you think I’m telling you this? Why do I want you to dredge that fault line? Lukas? Mervyn? Bennie? Karl?’ His stare burning into our shame; his silence underscoring our profanity. He removed his glasses, and nodding at us: ‘Because the same thing is going to happen to San Francisco, the same thing that happened three thousand years ago to Sodom and Gomorrah. God will drag it into the burning recesses of the earth; it will disappear off the face of the planet, swallowed as if it had never existed.’

  He broke off as applause drifted from the auditorium. Slid the glasses back into place. He said we were to be punished for our crime and defilement in a way that we would never forget. He said expulsion was really what we deserved — expulsion not only from the school, but from the human race — but that they had decided to be lenient, mostly for the sake of our parents and to spare the school public disgrace. He said that we would be punished in a way that would stay with us for the rest of our days; a way that would stand as a beacon of light to keep us from ever again venturing off God’s blessed path of spiritual and bodily holiness. And then, as Mathison broke off, Buys rose from his chair. I wanted to cry. I had never been caned by Buys. The very reason for our being on earth had been erased by this deed. ‘The very reason your parents brought you into the world.’ For a year and half I had managed to stay out of his claws; through hundreds of cuts from Uncle Charlie, Mr Mathison, both Junior and Secondary Choir masters: and now it had come to this. Tchaikovsky’s ‘None But the Lonely Heart’ was drifting from the auditorium. How many were we going to get? Six, so it was said, was the maximum. No one had ever heard of a boy getting more than six. And this was goingto be six. The severity — depravity — of what we had done warranted six, if God could swallow us into the earth, why, what heavenly reason did these men have to not give us each six of the best? The
long johns! Oh mercy, mercy, will help, at least a little, cushion it a bit, please let it help against Buys, no, not much, but it will help, please, please don’t let me be first.

  Buys took hold of Lukas’s shoulder and told him to bend forward and hold onto the desk. There was again the sound of applause. As the choir started on the Brahms lullaby, Buys lifted the cane till its tip almost touched the ceiling. It sang as it sped down, its force almost broke Lukas’s grip and he seemed to stumble forward. Dear Jesus, no, no, no. How can they allow this, we’ll die, better than telling Bok, Mervyn gulping, why, why, please not six. Then the next one. This time Lukas really held onto the desk; didn’t flinch. The third time Buys’s feet seemed to lift from the carpet as the cane struck Lukas, whose hands broke loose and he flew forward onto the desk, hands grabbing at nothing. If it’s like this for Lukas, we can’t make it; he’ll kill us. Lukas, coming up, straightened and turned to face Buys. Tears streamed down his cheeks, even as he grinned.

  ‘Bend, over, I’m not finished with you.’

  Lukas turned back. Now his shoulders were shaking. The fourth cut ripped into his bum and he let out a cry, came up, swung around and began sobbing.

  ‘Next one.’

  Oh my God, only four. Thank you, thank you. Only four. But why four why not three? Dear Jesus, if Lukas cries, how will I take it? None of us moved. Buys pointed.

  Mervy. Mervy stepped forward. He bent and looked over his shoulder. Buys told him to face forward. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch. Not Mervy. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears; tell them that Mervy was going to scream, that the audience would hear. But the choir was singing, I don’t know what — any song, Rilke’s ‘Elegies’ by Holst, Poulenc’s ‘Litanies a la vierge noire’, Saint-Saens’s ‘A Saiutaris’ or ‘Tantum Ergo’ or Coplands ‘The House on the Hill’ — louder than anything till now. And Mervy did — a split second before the first cut into him — let out a scream and shot upright, clasping his hands to his bum, already sobbing. Buys grabbed him by the jacket, turned him back to the desk. Just as Buys was about to bring down the cane, Mervyn jumped up and almost sank to his knees as he faced the man with the cane still above his head. Applause from the auditorium. Buys yanked Mervy up by the hair, and held him down over the desk. Leipoldt’s ‘Boggom and Voetsek’, through the doors. He brought down the cane and again Mervyn screamed, turned his head while Buys held his neck. Mervy begged, howling. After the third cut, the denim on his bum had changed colour. It couldn’t be pee. After the fourth, Mervy no longer screamed, he just turned around and sobbed into his arms. I glanced at him stepping back into line, caught Lukas, who was still crying.

  And then it is me. Please God, Jesus, no, no hate, Karl, hate, hate, be strong, hate, hate, strength comes from hate, don’t show them, show fucking Buys, try and be brave, Karl, don’t cry out, whatever you do, don’t cry out. I bend forward. Still Leipoldt, say with them: ’n hand vol gruis uit die Hantam wyk, wa-boom gnarrabos blare, gister was ek arm maar nou is ek ryk . . . Instead of holding with my arms forward, I lean across the desk’s surface and clasp my hands backwards around the overhang, almost resting my forehead on the glass. When it comes, against everything I will a white-hot iron thrust into my spine, I stumble forward, shoot upright and am at once crying; breathing through my mouth. I want to beg. Won’t beg, will not beg, won t help . . . But I cannot, cannot get myself to bend again. He takes me by the neck and turns me back to the desk. Applause, music, if I start screaming loud they’ll have to stop, but I cannot scream, everyone will know. The second also throws me up and I clasp my bum and sob, my face now turned to the ceiling. I see nothing. He is killing me. When I come up after the third, I am howling, looking from man to man, all three, pleading with my eyes, my sobs, my tears. The fourth, a fist offire in the small of my back, dizzying. I almost stumble as I fall back into line. My legs are trembling twigs, I sob and weep, I do not take in what is done to Bennie, I don’t care, kill him. The three of us, crying. Then, before I know what has happened to Bennie, he is beside me again. Te Deum from Britten’s Requiem.

  Buys must have put the cane down on the glass top and walked back to join the other two. No one spoke. When our crying had subsided, it was Mathison: ‘You four stand here tonight, drenched in shame. You are shame itself. That you must never doubt. None of you will ever speak about this again. Do you understand me?’

  We sobbed, whimpered.

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘You know what happened to Lot’s wife, don’t you? She turned into a pillar of salt. Lot se vrou, ’n Soutpilaar, verstaan julle my? Because she looked back.’ He paused. ‘Don’t look back at what you’ve done, never. Never speak about it, for to speak about it is to look back and to turn into a pillar of salt. You must move on.’ He again seemed on the verge of tears. I looked at him but could only catch phrases of what he was saying. Something by Samuel Barber.

  ‘You three, go.’ He motioned at the others. ‘Back to prep. You have been caned for not changing your sheets. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I’ve had the chance to speak to you three alone. Now, Karl, I want to talk to you.’

  The others had left and I alone faced the men. Like for the audition. Mathison said he had reason to suspect that, while I had not been the ringleader, I had egged the others on in our moral decrepitude. He said he had spoken extensively to the others. It was clear that I as much as Lukas had been the one to instigate the immorality.

  Then, like another blow, this time final and to my head, he asked: ‘Karl. What is this business about goats?’

  It is the slaughter. I want nothing; only to die. Please, please, let me die; let me vanish. I want to run. I want Bok, I want Bokkie. They who will not love me. Leave me alone! Let me be! I want to scream in helplessness. I am only a boy, I am only twelve. I am innocent.

  ‘The makwedini, Sir, in the kraals when I was small. They did it to the sheep,’ I sob, dragging my sleeves across my eyes, the snot-pit of my nose.

  ‘Then, why did you tell Miss Roos that you yourself had done it?’

  Had Lukas said anything? How much did they know? No, they could kill Lukas, and he would not have said anything. Lie, Karl, lie, lie, lie for your life, cling to your tattered dignity.

  ‘I didn’t, Sir, I think Miss Roos misunderstood what I said, Sir.’

  ‘That is because they’re heathen savages, Karl. It is the most disgusting thing in the world. The poor animals have no choice; it is worse even than what you have been punished for tonight.’ Again he takes the black leather-bound book, opens it, reads.

  My bum felt like red-hot coals had been thrown in there.

  ‘You grew up in Zululand, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Do the Zulus call their boys makwedini?’

  Why was he asking this? I waited. He waited. An answer was expected of me. But what lurked behind his question? I answered: ‘No, Sir.’ Again I waited. He stared at me, wanting something to sink in to my recognition. That he knew I was lying.

  Then it struck me. Oh Jesus, Jesus, why! Why! Why can’t you leave me alone, Lukas, umfaan, piccanin, kwedini, amakwetha, what does it matter, I just made a mistake with the word. Just a word. I wanted to cry again; wanted to beg them to leave me alone.

  I shook my head.

  ‘No, they don’t, Karl, do they? Go.’

  My head was going to burst; mad gene, vein in head, Bok oh please not find out, let it be over, cold, my bum, Mervy, snot on my jacket sleeve.

  I walked through the freezing dark. Run away, go hide, in the caves, in a shell, in the bush, Mkuzi, why, past the concert hall where the Juniors are singing, maybe, then, for it was somewhere, through the door or through the window, I heard ‘Da Drausst Auf die Gruen Au’.

  It was not Christmas, but they sang it that night.

  Back to the classroom. I registered the schluck-schluck in my veld-skoens; realised that at some point during it all I had pissed m
yself.

  Prep was over; the classroom empty. I walked upstairs to E Dorm. Applause and shouts of bravo, encore. Encore. A million thoughts and images — monkey-brain I might call it today. Somewhere in amongst those I was also struck by something else, something a writer in the retelling may withhold from revealing as a literary device to enhance affect or effect: during the whole eternity the four of us had spent in that office, then me alone, while the men sat there, while Buys had caned us, had sat there shaking his head, nodding and grunting while Mr Mathison read from the Holy Book and told us we represented the lowest forms of earthly life, the other one — sitting quiedy with his hands before him on the desk — had not moved. Not stirring, not speaking a word, not twitching a muscle, like a Sphinx, Mr Cilliers had sat there.

  12

  Jonas held the rams horns, bending its neck backwards while Boy and Bokkie held on to its twitching feet. Its eyes, bulging big and glassy, blinked rapidly. Then it struggled one more time, threw its horns from side to side. Bok brought the silver blade down onto the jugular — jutting and bulging — and in an instant — as the blade was jerked across — blood spurted in a thick red jet onto the sand. Within seconds the fountain turned first to little spurts from different veins, then to trickles running down the velvety brown hide. The blood curdled, made knots and blotches in the sand. You could pick it up — like soft pebbles that disintegrated with a slight rub. Then the cutting up began. This part for our biltong. That part for the kraal.

  13

  The back of his head, his shoulders, his back, moving over, hands above the piano, the piano keys. To his left, beside the organ, the ensemble, eyes on him, poised, concentrated. To his right, in front of the long windows, the soloists’ heads silhouetted against the late sun — Dominic, to his left with Erskin Louw, Gerhard Conradie and Mike van der Bijlt — nodding time. Text from the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation. Bassoon and double bass, then the cello and viola, D-A-E and then the move, gently, to E minor, gentle, gentle resolution to D major, then the brasses setting tone, solemn, careful, D major, then to B minor; B, orchestra repeats, voices — the magic of communion is about to happen — almost emulating the instruments: Erskin: Sanctus taken up by Gerhard, joined by Dominic, then Mike’s deep, diminuendo, soft brass, legato, repeated, calling a God of power and might: