Embrace

by Mark Behr

  ‘You know why Friday the thirteenth is meant to be bad luck?’ ‘It’s a heathen superstition, that’s why,’ I said.

  ‘No! Exactly the opposite, Dad says. It’s a Christian superstition, because in the olden days, before Christianity, the pagans were allowed to have sex with anyone they wanted to when it was Friday the thirteenth. Like a special treat, sort of thing. Just imagine howmarvellous! Until the Christians came along and because they hated seeing people having a good time, the Christians started saying Friday the thirteenth is bad luck.’

  I clicked my tongue, then thought of something: ‘If the Christians are so bad, why does your dad let you sing all this religious music? Why doesn’t he send you to a school where you can dance around the fires with the pagans at their feasts?’

  ‘The fuckin’ Christians have some of the best music because the churches had the money to commission composers, that’s why,’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘Karl...’ came his voice, now quieter.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I get in to bed with you?’

  Eyes, squeezed shut, could make none of the panic disappear. I wanted to tell him about the caning; I wanted to say that he had no idea he was walking into a fire; that Mathison had appointed me — chosen me, because he trusted me and because he knew I understood the bestiality of such acts — to report on this sort of thing. But to speak seemed impossible: I saw everything like a long unbroken line of dominoes; if I said one thing, explained one thing, a chain reaction would be set off, everything, my fine artful act of doing and saying some things and not doing and not saying others would tumble. I must just say no; and let him be satisfied with that. What if he grew angry if I said no without explaining? It would have to be a risk I’d take. I was not going to tell him about Buys or anything that happened while he was in Europe. Mathison, Harding, Jesus, a day before we left for Malawi! When for the first time since August Mathison asked me about ‘that business’. ‘Have you heard anything more about that business?’ ‘No, Mr Mathison.’ ‘You didn’t hear anything about Harding and Reyneke?’ Fear. What if he knew I knew and hadn’t told him? I could say I hadn’t been sure. ‘I’ve heard things about them,’ Mathison said. ‘What do you think? You heard anything, Karl?’Then, grasping at straws, knowing the Standard Sevens were leaving theschool for good, that I’d never see them again, and Mathison probably neither: ‘I heard someone say that Reyneke did it with his girlfriend.’ And Mathison laughing, said: ‘Oh that’s okay, Karl, that’s normal. I only want to hear about that other kind of business.’

  ‘No, Dom. You must stop that. You must never do that. If anyone finds out that you do it — toss off — or this business of getting into bed . . . Dominic, they’ll kill you.’

  I could hear him sit up in bed. He was quiet for a moment: ‘Karl, what has gotten into you? Were thirteen! Boys toss off when they’re thirteen. It’s nature’s way of saying you’re ready to screw.’

  ‘That’s a sin unless you’re married.’

  He fell back on his back. A faint light from some form of moon fell across his bed. ‘You’re clueless. Damn clueless, Karl.’

  Suddenly, unable to control myself, I turned my head on the pillow. Wanting to hurt him, seeking to invoke an authority outside of Buys and Mathison and the events of that June, I blurted: ‘In July, while you were overseas, Bok took me to a man who specialises in education. He’s a doctor, and he told me to be cautious of boys like you.’

  He was silent. I again heard him sit up; could see the shadow of his shoulders and head above the white sheets.

  ‘What are you talking about, cautious of me?’ he now whispered. ‘You’re girlish, Dominic. I’m a real boy.’ I saw no reason to whisper. Call me clueless; I’ll show you who’s clueless.

  ‘I’m not interested in that shit, Karl. Biiiig boy, Karl. You and Superman. What I want to know is why did Bok take you to see this . . . this doctor?’

  ‘To speak about my career, my subjects for high school, what I’m going to become when I grow up.’

  And in the process of growing up you’re not meant to be friends with me?’ He snorted and again fell onto his back. We were quiet.

  ‘That was a shrink, do you realise that?’ He paused. ‘Bok took you to see a psychiatrist or something.’

  ‘Rubbish, Dominic. He’s an education specialist.’

  ‘Well, tell me what you spoke about?’

  ‘About how I was going to become a lawyer, how I’m going to lead my life, attain my goals.’

  ‘Yes? And?’

  ‘Why I was doing so badly at school.’

  ‘You do better than me! And I don’t do so badly. Or get dragged off to psychiatrists,’

  ‘I’m not doing my best, that’s why. I used to get nineties, now I’m in the mid-seventies.’

  ‘And how did you get to the girlish part?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. Let’s sleep.’

  ‘Fine, Karl,’ he hissed, sarcasm in his voice. ‘Let’s sleep. Sleep away your worries, dear friend. Sleep away our friendship too, for all I care. But let me tell you one thing: it’s not you that needed a psychiatrist. No, it’s your father.’

  ‘Fuck you. You don’t know Bok. Keep your mouth off him.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough to know he’s a bloody lunatic.’

  ‘Dominic, say one more word about my father and I’ll knock your teeth out, I swear.’

  ‘And Bokkie, what did she have to say about this little exercise?’ ‘Leave my mother out of it.’

  ‘So, if I’m so girlish, why did you stay friends with me, even after the big education specialist, hey? Education specialist, my arse! Why are we still friends if he told you not to be friends with me? Can you tell me that much? Surely you owe me that?’

  I wished only that he’d now leave me alone. Beneath the anger I could hear the hurt in his voice. I wanted to tell him about the caning, to tell him that he didn’t understand, about the Terylene-covered weights in the suitcase on the table beside the door to our room, about why I now wrote in a slanted hand.

  ‘It was the presents, hey Karl!’ he snapped. ‘It was the sentimental Abba tape, the shit, crap, cheap music you love so much, and the chocolates and the T-shirt I brought you from overseas. Thirty pieces of silver, Karl, enough to make you forget your education specialist.’

  I wanted to weep. What he was saying was devoid of truth. No, it was not, nowhere, near true. If anything the T-shirt... I squashed my face into the pillow. It was because you came back and saw that I was unhappy; it was because you knew I wasn’t really ill; it was because you’re my best friend; because you accept me the way I am; because I trust you because you’re everything no one else in my life is; even if you had not brought me presents, because I know you love me; and I’m leaving, next year, I don’t want to be in Cilliers’s choir, I’m not coming back. But I didn’t say any of that. Only felt my face contort, knew I was going to cry.

  ‘The presents. Jesus Christ, you’re cheap, aren’t you?’ Again sitting up in bed, his words pounding me. I could hear him turn from me, heard the bed sigh as he fell back and turned to the window. Away.

  ‘It wasn’t the presents, Dominic. That Paris T-shirt is in my case, you can take it back. I swear,’ I tried to say, voice crumbling, tasting the tears, hearing myself answer: ‘I’m here because you’re my friend. Because I love—’ I choked on the words and turned around and sobbed into my pillow.

  I felt him beside me, his arm tightly across my back and his hand tucked beneath my chest, his breathing into my ear.

  Halfway through a concert, during break, we’d change from the grey flannels, white shirts, blue waistcoats and white bibs into long red cassocks with white overgarments. Much of the second half of the tour programme consisted of Christmas carols. One night in the middle of the first half of the programme, before carols, first Bruin, then Meintjies fainted of the oppressive heat. The Central Africa Presbyterian church, with its enormous dome, built a hund
red years before, seemed to smoulder like a massive hothouse. Even with the stained-glass windows opened, still not a breeze stirred. Perspiration stuck the white shirts to our backs. Fringes were plastered across foreheads. Mervy looked as though he’d run a marathon. Plans for cossacks, garments and candles were cancelled. Before the choir went on for the second half, Mr Roelofse and Dominic went on for Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’. It had become customary for Dominic, like Steven Almeida with ‘Oktobermaand’, to get an encore. The audience, as usual went wild. After three or four bows Dominic and Mr Roelofse walked off. They hovered around us outside to see whether the applause would abate or whether they’d have to go on for the encore. Bennie used an LP cover to fan down Mr Roelofse. The audience kept clapping. There would have to be an encore. Dominic asked Mr Roelofse whether he could do something a cappella. Roelofse, obviously exhausted and delighted at the reception in spite of the heat, agreed. Hastily finding me amongst the first sopranos, Dominic whispered that I should stand at the door and listen: ‘This is for you.’ He walked back to the front of the pulpit as the audience roared. A hundred times from backstage I had heard him and Steven sing. There was nothing new to it. But this time it was for me. And it was without accompaniment. With his voice alone, he began a song I knew, though I’d never heard him sing it before. Aunt Siobhain had taught me the words and the melody some time at St Lucia. The song had never been anything but a part of her small Irish repertoire together with the others we all joined in: ‘Old Danny Boy’, ‘Molly Malone’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Dominic’s voice, spiralled in the acoustics, up to the dome and melted through the warm air:

  Tis the last rose of summer

  Left blooming alone

  All her lovely companions

  Are faded and gone

  Noflow’r of her kindred

  No rosebud is nigh

  To reflect back her blushes

  Or gire sigh for sigh

  I’ll not leave thee

  Thou lone one!

  To pine on the stem

  Since the lovely are sleeping

  Go sleep thou with them

  Thus kindly I scatter

  Thy leaves o’er the bed

  Where thy mates of the garden

  Lie scentless and dead

  With Steven and Mervyn in the shadows beyond where the open doors’ light fell, surrounded by first and second sopranos, I felt tears in my eyes. For happiness. For something moving. For something so beautiful. A terribly intimate relief.

  So soon may I follow

  When friendships decay

  And from love’s shining circle

  The gems drop away

  When true hearts lie wither’d

  And fond ones are flown

  Oh! Who would inhabit

  This bleak world alone

  Again the audience roared. People were on their feet, again calling for an encore. This time, when Dominic came off, he said he couldn’t do more. He was exhausted. The rest of the concert — ‘Silent Night’, ‘Deck the Halls’, ‘Greensleeves’, ‘Away in a Manger’, ‘Auf die Gruen Au’, ‘Joy to the World’, the latter in which the audience was allowed to join — was a raving success. Mr Roelofse glowed red from the heat and gratification. Outside, Ma’am Sanders and Mathison too seemed overjoyed and Mathison shook forty boys’ hands.

  At home that night, I knew something had changed between Dominic and me. Neither of us said anything. We undressed and got into bed, still sweating. We spoke for a while about the concert. I said that his and Stevens ‘Happy Wanderer’ had been better than Gilbert and Sullivan could ever have intended it to be. He said breathing in the heat and humidity had made the challenge of joining notes for ‘Bel Canto’ a hundred times more difficult than it already was. We need black voices in this choir, he said, did you hear when they sang along with ‘Joy to the World’? It was as if the heat didn’t affect black people in the same way as it did whites. ‘Dad will be furious for me saying something like that, but maybe their diaphragms or their lungs have evolved differently from ours. Maybe because they’ve lived in Africa for millions of years.’ He spoke almost as if in thought to himself. I turned off the bedside light.

  ‘I’m telling you. If this choir had black voices, Jesus, no other choir in the universe could come near us. Black boys’ voices. And the music would be so much more interesting. Real. What did you think?’

  ‘Blacks don’t sing “Bel Canto”, Dom, they do the rhythmical tribal music stunningly, but not the sort of stuff we sing. You saw that crowd last week at the afternoon concert. Didn’t have a clue about the music. And there’s no ways the school would allow blacks in.’

  ‘Of course the school won’t, but that’s so thick! And blacks don’t sing “Bel Canto”! Karl, where have you been? You’re as bad as Bennie and Merv. What about the Negro spirituals, how are they meant to sound? Not like rhythmical tribal, for God’s sake. And what about Marianne Anderson? Have you never heard that voice?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right, it is thick not having them. But they could never afford it.’

  We lay silently and I wondered what it would be like having a black boy in choir or in class with us. It seemed fine to me, as long as they didn’t take everything over. But where would they find the money? And could they speak Afrikaans or English well enough to cope in school? It was unimaginable. Maybe in fifty years, once wehad educated them, elevated them like some of the blacks in America and the other private schools around Durban.

  ‘What did you think of .. .’ He broke off mid-sentence, knowing I knew what he wanted to know.

  ‘It was like nothing you’ve ever done before.’

  I could hear only my own breathing and the sound of my heart racing in my chest.

  ‘Can I come to—’

  ‘Yes.’

  And he did. We lay there and held each other’s hands. He ran his hand down my belly. When his fingers came close to the elastic of my pyjama shorts, I took hold of his wrist, held it back. And even as we did nothing more, fell asleep beside each other on the bed in the missionaries’ house, I must have known we had reached a private crossroads. Must have already suspected which turn I’d allow us to take. With our private parts.

  After the final Blantyre concert, before returning to South Africa for Christmas, we were to have what I had most been looking forward to: four free days on Lake Malawi.

  The first sighting of the calm surface left me mum. Instinct was to look for the other side. From the dusty bus window, I strained my eyes east, then north and south. Nothing. You can’t see the other side! It’s like the ocean! If this is the eighth largest lake on earth, what could be the largest? Like a slab of veined blue-grey marble, bordered by a darker line of blue where the water met the other blue of the horizon, the surface of Lake Malawi captivated my gaze. Somewhere, up there, beyond the beyond of the fine blue north-eastern horizon, I trusted, lay the country where I had been born thirteen years and two months before. The water beyond the white beaches, bouldered cliffs and trees, was more than enough to temper my disappointment at not being able to see that place, nor even Mozambique, which I assumed from the map had to be directly east from us.

  Off the bus, we stood amongst our luggage beneath a sycamore fig and waited to be divided into host families. Lukas had asked Miss — Ma’am — to see whether there was a chance of the six of us being placed together — if any host families had a big enough house; we didn’t mind sharing rooms or sleeping on the floor. A call for eight — yes, there was a piano — and the six of us, delighted, volunteered. Instead of two more boys for the one additional room, Mathison suddenly stepped into the process and insisted that Ma’am stay with us. I knew why, wondered if the others barring Dominic had guessed at his sudden intervention. This placed a slight damper on our excitement, for, though we by now knew she was not quite the ogre we’d been led to believe, the simple presence of Ma’am’s authority meant we would have to be more cautious in the way we behaved and the way we spoke.

  A
white house on a part of the lake called something like Monkey Bay. Close to Cape Maclear, our hosts told us, where the first Scottish missionaries lived when they came to Nyassaland. Mr and Mrs Olver were Zambian expatriates, now living in England. They came to their house in Malawi only for northern hemisphere winters. While in England, the house here, furnished and lined with bookshelves, was rented to tourists. Year round a staff of two Malawians — Tobie and Chiluma — took care of the buildings. Dominic and I shared; Lukas and Almeida, Bennie and Mervyn, and Ma’am was on her own. Over each bed — covered in white linen changed daily by Tobie and Chiluma — hung scalloped white mosquito nets. From white walls small windows opened for a view of the lake. At a jetty below the house lay a catamaran and a forty-foot yacht, sails neatly rolled, wooden decks polished and bronze fixtures burnished. Mrs Olver said there were snorkels and goggles in the boathouse by the jetty, extra towels in the bathrooms: we should help ourselves to whatever we wanted in the fridges from the kitchen. Fridges; fridges, the plural ran, almost stumbled, through my mind. Lunch, around a table that could seat sixteen, was an assortment of cold meats, fruit, salads, juice and freshly baked bread rolls, served by Tobie and Chiluma, who wore long white Arab-like uniforms. On their heads they wore red fezzes and I wondered whether they might be Mohammedans.

  Four days off; four days in which we would see the rest of the choir formally only on two occasions for a braai at some resort.

  Floating on my back in the lake beneath the house, I thought to myself that the water I was in had touched Tanzanian soil, or had come from clouds that had been formed of evaporation from northern lakes and rivers. I was so close to there and, while I would not allow anything to detract from the pleasure of the time with my friends in the big house, there was a vague regret at not being able to see the Livingstone Mountains. Who cares, I thought, this is close enough and if were lucky Mr Olver may take us north up the lake from where I might see Tanzania.