Embrace

by Mark Behr

  ‘Were not poor,’ I called after him. And we’ve got more brains than all you Soutpiele put together!’

  The discarded book back in hand, we crossed the lawn and snuck into the bush so Lena could resume her fishing. She said she’d known there would be trouble when from across the lake she saw them pass through the gate. We baited our hooks and cast in from our secret place. Our rods were bamboo poles; our hooks pins stolen from Bokkie’s sewing kit or from Pahla Hardware. Soon forgetting the closeness of the shave, we were again laughing and Lena was certain the English boys wouldn’t come near me again. Together we sat preparing new verbal assaults for me to sling at them the moment opportunity arose. A phone had now been installed at home — though we were never allowed to make calls — and I suggested that next time we should actually call the police.

  ‘Poor James,’ I laughed, ‘he’s really gonna get it at school this time.’ ‘Do him good,’ Lena smirked, ‘to get those little white fingers out of the flower arrangements. Little dandy.’

  The thin makeshift bamboos to which our lines were tied, the wine-corks as floats, were a far cry from the rods, reels and coloured floats we had used from the jetty at St Lucia. All sold off with the move to the city. What a sad excuse the lake of Kingsway Bird Sanctuary now seemed for all the places we had called home before leaving the Parks Board.

  Are we really so poor, Lena?’ I asked, putting a clump of bread onthe hook and suddenly wishing we were back in a place where I had barely needed to know what money was. How I envied Robbie who at break bought a packet of Fritos or an ice cream every Friday when he received his pocket money. Imagine being allowed to get pocket money!

  ‘Bok says were going to be rich. And we already have more than some of the Kuswag kids. Just ignore the Souties, Karl. We’ll have our day.’

  ‘In heaven,’ I said.

  ‘Before that, I jolly well hope. I’m going to marry a rich man, someone like Uncle Joe.’

  ‘He’ll make you mad.’

  ‘Aunt Lena was funny before she met Joe Mackenzie. Anyway, I’ll divorce him and take his money. And remember I’m not the one with the mad gene,’ she said, glancing at me with a twinkle in her eye. I asked her to stop and for a while we sat in silence, watching the corks, waiting for a bite.

  ‘Do you ever think of heaven?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Shall I tell you what it’s like up there?’

  ‘Okay. But not one of your long-winded, boring stories.’

  ‘Heaven is where no one speaks,’ I said. ‘People just look at each other and they know what the other is thinking without saying a single word.’

  ‘Karl, jissis man, you’re crazy. What about the angel Gabriel, he spoke to Mary?’

  ‘Real angels communicate without words.’

  ‘Since when can people understand each other without speaking?’ she asked, shaking her head and squinting in the glare.

  ‘In heaven they can. It’s a little like that Englishman — showing you the sign with his nose. I mean, he didn’t say a word and you knew what he meant.’

  ‘So, that’s sign language, like for the deaf. It’s still a language.’

  ‘But heaven will be without signs even. And no one will be deaf ‘Oh please, Karl!’ she clicked her tongue, irritated. ‘Rather tell me what we’ll eat and drink in heaven.’

  Paraphrasing, adapting, changing and adding to my memories of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and drive-in sweet commercials I started, wondering briefly whether she’d notice and catch me out: ‘There’ll be lots and lots of chocolate. As you come in, right beside the gates: huge, huge, huge slabs of Nestle Peppermint Crisp and Cadbury’s Whole Nut, and it will hang like fruit from trees. I’m seeing the Mopani branches bent almost to the ground from the heavy chocolate harvest. And we’ll walk on marshmallow stepping stones across cream soda rivers, I can see us now, crossing like were playing hopscotch — and the hippos are jelly babies and the fish all kinds of shaped Smarties. Without saying anything were picking our fill of Aero and Chocolate Log from the branches, wide like the wild figs in the forest of louries. The next stream is Coca-Cola, and the next one Fanta, spurting from orange fountains and were sailing on a lake much bigger than this in a boat made of sweet wafer and, Lena, you’re taking a bite from the life vests that are made of marzipan. The boat’s masts are inlaid with cherry’s — maraschino — and the sails are vanilla ice cream sprinkled with Flake that’s melting in the sun and were just opening our mouths and it’s dripping between our lips . . . And it tastes like Mevrou Dominee s brandy tart sauce . . .’ I paused, my own mouth watering. I looked at her.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she said. ‘Put in some seafood — prawns and crayfish mayonnaise — savoury stuff, things like that...’

  It could be said that if Juffrou Sang had not selected me to sing the lead in the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I may never have learnt to read — in my desultory way — sheet music and may never have ended up going to the school in the mountains. But that’s second guessing the route I may or may not have followed, and I am not taken to doing that — ever. What in life is done is done, what is written is written, what is regrettable is regretted, who was loved can never be unloved, and to rewrite this life other stories will have to be told or this one read differently.

  To perform the Pied Piper I not only had to learn four solos, I also had to play the recorder. By learning the recorder, Juffrou Sang was of the opinion I was at least learning the rudimentaries of music, despite our not having a piano at home. The newly built house where Juffrou Sang lived with Prof and her daughter was at 27 Dan Pienaar, just down the road from us. Through the many afternoons there as I practised my solos and mastered the recorder, I got to know and increasingly like Alette, whom I knew was the top student in class with Lena, According to Lena and Glenn, Alette was a bookworm and a bore who looked as clumsy as an anteater when running on the netball court. The two of them would never be friends, and, Lena warned, it would stand me in good stead to remember that Juffrou Sang and Prof were snobs who thought themselves better than the rest of Kuswag and Dan Pienaar. The drip Alette was already well on her way to being a real culture vulture — just like her pretentious mother. And, Bernice said, she’s an only child, and only children are always spoilt rotten.

  Within a matter of months Alette had become one of my closest friends. Her and Lena’s class were on a playground separate from ours, and while we rarely spoke to each other at school and she seldom came to our home, our afternoons at their house were spent playing recorder duets, singing, and me occasionally just sitting listening to her practice the piano. Her long brown hair was always tied in two severe ponytails behind her ears, she had stocky legs and even at that age a matronly walk — yes, Lena was right — rather like her mother. She had a pointy nose that turned upwards and small round eyes like a monkey. She was plain incarnate, and I was old enough to know. Yet, as time went by and the more of it we spent together, her laughter at sticking a bow in my hair, her cleverness, her interest in how we had lived in the bush, her musicality, the way we sang togetherand played the recorder, became to me intoxicating. I found my eyes drawn to her mouth, the way her full lips — Lena said she had poetoe-smackers like a black girl — were outlined with a tiny ridge like a light pencil line. My heart leapt when she walked into church and sat down somewhere near the organ. I began picturing her walking down the isle in a glittering wedding gown while I stood below the pulpit in a black suit with a red rose in my lapel.

  Lena’s and Glenn’s displeasure did nothing to still my growing passion for Alette or Juffrou Sang. On the contrary, my sister’s scowl, her exclusion from my going over to 27 Dan Pienaar, may in some ways have added to my bliss.

  As we were the only kids on Dan Pienaar who received no pocket money, we, together with Glenn and Thea, Betty, Mary-Alice and James, decided to put on a musical in the neighbourhood. A fundraiser for me and Lena. Bernice had to stay home for homework, something I r
egretted as she, unlike Lena, had quite a good voice. At my suggestion that we invite Alette, Lena baulked, saying she wouldn’t participate if Alette came along. Mary-Alice, Thea and I wrote down words to songs from The Sound of Musk on foolscap pages with sheets of carbon between for multiple copies. We all dressed up and took to the neighbourhood streets, me shimmering in a blue chiffon dress borrowed without consent from Mrs Preston’s cupboard. Itching on my head was Aunt Lena’s old wig and my face was vaguely obscured by Mary-Alice’s communion veil, attached to the wig by one of Bokkie’s hairclips. I was Maria and the rest of the troop doubled in various roles: they were the nuns’ chorus singing ‘Maria’ while I danced across lawns up and down Dan Pienaar Drive. I did Maria’s solo of ‘I Have Confidence in Me’, and Betty and Glenn did ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen. Mary-Alice, who had a good voice and with her long hair insisted we call her Isadora Duncan, was breathtaking as the strict Mother Abbess. Even though we hadn’t initially planned it, Mary-Alice threw in a performance of ‘Long Haired Lover From Liverpool’, which drew howls of approval and applause from all over the neighbourhood. James and Thea, now nervous and withdrawn in public as they had never been in private, switched roles as any one of the Von Trapp children. Lena, self-conscious about her singing despite our protests that it was fine for a musical, acted as the purse-keeper, collecting five cents from each yard for every performance. We did ‘Do-Re-Mi’ and ended with ‘Climb Every Mountain marching out of the yard, back into the street. We were the Von Trapps fleeing from the Nazis, a group of professional actors, a troop of minstrels from the Middle Ages. Under my leadership we went from lawn to lawn — careful to stay out of sight of Alette’s house.

  By the end of the afternoon, we had made two rand. Lena and I were ecstatic. We had more money than we’d ever possessed. I already knew what I would buy. Thea had told me of a CNA in Durban that had a poster of Rudolf Nureyev on sale for one rand twenty. It was in black and white, unfortunately. But that made the poster cheaper than if it were in colour and it was now, unexpectedly, within my reach. I was sure Mrs Willemse would buy the poster for me next time they went into town. I could see it, glossy and vivid against the wall, above my bed where at night I could lie looking up at the man leaping skyward. And who cared if it was in black and white; I would simply imagine that it was in colour and it would be so.

  At home we excitedly told Bokkie and Bernice of the day’s extraordinary windfall. I said I was getting a poster of Rudolf Nureyev for above my bed.

  But instead of sharing in our delight or praising our resourcefulness, Bokkie was beside herself: ‘We are not poor whites! We don’t stick hippy posters against white walls and even less do we run around the streets begging for money!’

  ‘James was also with us,’ I said, hoping the complicity of Aunt Siobhain’s son would bring her to a different insight.

  ‘I don’t care about your English cousin! Were Afrikaners and we have different values. It’s all those years at St Lucia under the Pierces. You two have today single-handedly ruined our reputation in this neighbourhood! How can I show my face on the streets again, face the Dameskring at Bible Study? That my children go around the neighbourhood collecting money! Wait till your father gets back from safari! Just you wait.’ Rather than beating us — a fate we would have preferred infinitely — she told us to get rid of the costumes. To our horror, she sent us back through the neighbourhood to return the money and offer apologies for our behaviour. From a distance she followed, standing at the bottom of each street or driveway, supervising us as we slunk to front doors in the dusk.

  When Bok got home Bokkie forced us to tell him, in our own words, how we had shamed the De Man family. This was not the bush, Bok said, and we had to learn to abide by the codes of the city. Even as he spoke, it looked as though he might start laughing, and we knew we were safe. Then his expression went stern and he said that if he heard that I was in a dress or a wig ever again, or that I’d danced across the neighbourhood lawns, he’d beat me so that I’d remember it for the rest of my life. And somewhere there, in the humid haze of the long Toti afternoons, I slowly danced less. Sang more and again read more. Often still wondering how much smaller I would have had to have been for them to have allowed me to be a dancer.

  Lena and I, Glenn and Thea took turns at stealing small things from various shops at the new Pahla Station shopping centre. Sweets from the cafe, and from Pahla Hardware Dinky cars, penknives, hammers and nails, pins for fishing, candles, pieces of perspex, ropes, pliers — all of which went into the fort we had started under the overhanging fronds of a datepalm at the bottom of 21 Dan Pienaar. Here we stockpiled in case the kaffirs took over the country. The four of us in a secret gang from which everyone else was excluded. When the kaffirs came we would be able to live for weeks on the loot we had amassed beneath the palm.

  For months I had my eye on one of Pahla Hardware’s miniature

  Primus stoves, an accessory we all wanted for the fort. As the sizeable Primus was too bulky to fit beneath our shirts, we were all too afraid to attempt the theft. On a day when the shopkeeper was somewhere along the back shelves, I picked up the Primus, held it confidently to my chest, and glided out into the street. When the others came out and found me in the bush behind the shopping centre, they could scarcely believe their eyes. Now we needed fuel! We at once sent back Thea to steal a bottle of methylated spirits and Lena went off to relieve the cafe of a packet of marshmallows. Beneath the palm, we melted marshmallows over the Primus and I lit all the candles, saying we needed flames to create a more festive atmo.

  Again perusing the shelves of Pahla Hardware a while later, I slipped a leather pencil bag down the front of my shorts. Just as I was leaving the shopkeeper stepped in front of me, blocking my way. She asked what I had hidden in my pants. I said nothing, that she had a dirty mind and she’d better let me out. She said she was going to call the police unless I removed whatever was in there. Pushing past her and making a run for it seemed stupid, as the whole neighbourhood would know who we were. Red-faced I extracted the pencil bag and handed it to her. She said that she’d had her eyes on us for quite a while and warned that not one of us was to set foot again in her store. If we came near there she’d call in the police and make sure our parents were informed of what common thieves they had for children.

  I strutted out in shame, enraged that I’d been caught, but relieved at the escape. Furious that I had spoilt the central source of our raids, Glenn smacked me behind the head and demanded to know why I had stolen a pencil bag in the first place. Lena warned him not to lay another hand on me. Then she slapped me against the head, commanding that henceforth I steal only things that could reasonably be shared by the whole gang.

  ‘One needs a pencil bag,’ I began to explain, but was cut short by

  Lena who snapped: ‘Don’t say one, like its all of uS. Stop talking like a ladeda! You may need a stupid pencil bag but the gang doesn’t.’

  Something happened in the Kingsway Bird Sanctuary with its lake and its sprawling acres. A few times during afternoons when I sat there reading, my eyes began to water and I’d move from the sun into the shade. But even in the shade they watered. Without feeling as though I were crying, I knew that I indeed was. Might my eyes be watery because of the spitting bugs in the feather trees; was I developing another form of hay fever? Did I need glasses? Then, one day when James accompanied Lena and me to fish, there was a moment in which I almost began to weep when I heard a peacock call. Sure enough, the’ next time I was alone and their call ran through the trees, my eyes watered and tears brimmed over and ran down my cheeks. When the tears disappeared, a cloud hovered over me — even when the sun was shining. And then, afterwards, I developed headaches and had to take two Disprin. I knew that Aunt Lena’s headaches often landed her in hospital where she had to be injected with Voltarin. When I told Bernice and Stephanie, they said it was nothing to worry about, I was merely into the blues. For the blues — I discovered — it helped if I took antihist
amine. The tablets did not make me feel drowsy as the prescription warned. Instead, like small miracles, they made me feel as if I was in complete control of my world, as if nothing around me really much mattered.

  3

  Agnus, second declension masculine, an endless word over ninety-five bars. Dei, second declension genitive, possessive. I named them while his hands brought us in. Qui — has to correlate with lamb of God, masculine — all the while scratching the mosquito bites that itched and now felt like many more than three, as though they stretched all the way up the side of my thigh. Tollis, second person, Pecata, second declension, neuter, and Mundi, second or third declension genitive of second Deus, Deum, Dei, something nominative plural. Miserere — what the hell does it take, genitive, take pity on me, passive, indicative, imperative, subjunctive, is it active or passive? Must be an odd word, nobis, dative, donna nobis, give to us peace. The last movement. Here we re bringing everything to a head. This is the body of Christ, broken for you. Communion is taken. Again I scratched at the bites, trying not to move my shoulder or arm, to seem concentrated, while wanting badly to drop my pants and look. Could it have been a hairy caterpillar or a poisonous leaf rather than a mosquito?

  Ma’am had brought a message to class saying I was to go with Mr Cilliers to have my stitches out in Estcourt. He — she said — had an appointment in Pietermaritzburg to see someone from the SABC orchestra to discuss the December performance. He — I at once wanted to believe — must have invented an excuse so he could be the one to take me to hospital. I would be out-and-out surprised if we went anywhere near Maritzburg! We drove off in his Mazda 323 and yes, he said, the meeting in Maritzburg was real. Disappointed that I was not indeed the ordering point of his life, it was none the less satisfying to know I’d be missing half my classes and that I’d be having the full day with him. Our first since Paternoster.