by Mark Behr
The rise and fall of his back beneath me tells me he’s fallen asleep. Stroking the shoulders I whisper that I must go. In a sleepy voice he tells me to wait a few weeks before I return. He will let me know when he again thinks it safe. While I search for my pyjamas in the dark, slip my arms into the dressing gown, I wonder whether he has begun to distrust me. Is my assurance through the invocation of Knowles and Stein not reason enough for him to let go of his fear? ‘I love you,’ he whispers, standing naked in the dark behind me at the door, his fingers brushing my neck as I, without answering, leave.
The moment his door shut, I turned and walked down the passage to the first music room. The smell of fresh paint and new linoleum filled the dark. Avoiding the music stands and instrument cases, I felt my way to the window. Beneath my fingers the panel swung open and I edged my body through the opening. From the outside I shut it, taking care to leave a gap into which a finger could later be inserted for re-entry. I removed my slippers, pushing them beneath the tufts of grass overhanging the water duct. Barefoot, I turned right and slunk down the white walls of classrooms, the conservatory, and headed towards the river. Once amongst the poplars I began collecting branches and dry twigs.
At the fort, I whispered Uncle Klaas’s name and dropped the bundle. I heard both of them stir almost at once: grunts, fabric against fabric, limbs creaking, the blanket catching against a piece of wire in the thatched walls. Uncle Klaas mumbled something — either to me or to the man beside him. The black man, whom I had started thinking of as the Silent One, said nothing, barely making a sound. It was too dark on the inside for me to make out the way they slept. In the afternoons, when we got there, no trace remained of them other than the smell of smoke and kaffir Bennie or Mervy commented on. I pretended to ignore the remarks. Or, when the smell was overwhelming, feigned perplexity.
‘You again, Karl.’ I now made out the words, ‘What you whispering for?’ muttered over the sound of his fumbling for the matches. He groaned, sat up and I heard him crawl towards the opening where I’d gone down on my haunches, waiting. From the structure’s mouth, their smell united with the creaking of limbs as Uncle Klaas sat down, the outline of his shape folding in its legs. The Silent One moved invisibly behind him. Soon I could make out both their shapes against the dark inside of the fort. Before Uncle Klaas struck the match, there was pawing at the thatch, a swish, and I knew a clump of the grass my friends and I had painstakingly tied had been extracted from the walls. Piece by piece this place would be dismanded, I knew, and so in the afternoons I would pick more grass, try to fill in the gaps left by their nightly forage. Box and a match in one hand, Uncle Klaas struck the sulphur, holding the tiny flame to the thatch, which immediately danced into flames. He tugged more grass from the wall and I held out some of the smaller twigs. These he held over the flames and then placed the fire right in front of me. Around us the night had gone quiet, only twigs and thatch crackling beneath the filthy white fingers with the long fingernails bordered in grime. The face, illuminated by fire: beard tangled and the one cheek engraved with sand. The Silent One, wrapped in the school’s grey blanket, his brown face dark and still knotted with sleep in the flickering shadows.
Uncle Klaas looked up from the flames, signalled for more wood, and his eyes twinkled like black beads in the yellow light. Devilish eyes. Handing him twigs, I sat outside, my back to the river, facing the two men inside our fort.
‘Up again,’ he said and I grinned. The first time, when I’d brought my blanket, I angrily swore to myself it would be the last. That if they didn’t leave soon, I’d report them. But the night after my stitches were removed I had returned, had woken them and Uncle Klaas had at once sent me to collect twigs — no fuss, no shock or surprise, as if they had been expecting me. Now each time was the same. The Silent One’s face a blank slate, and Uncle Klaas always a little amused. Each time I was there, I tried to get him to speak about himself, to tell me about the Liebenberg family, about why he stopped being a professor and became a tramp. Each time I asked about my late great-grandfather and great-grandmother, he said they had existed in his previous life and that he had nothing to say about them or the university. I said I had seen photographs of him in my great-grandparents’ passage when I was small. That’s a time in his life that was over, he said, he didn’t think of it for it amounted to nothing more than unnecessary baggage. Then I let it go, afraid somehow that my questions would push him to madness. One in each generation. And I felt pity for him, for even as he refused to speak about the Liebenberg family, he was so clearly part of them: a younger — filthy — replica of my Oupa.
‘I came to show you this,’ I said, lifting the implement from my pocket.
Careful to evade his touch, I handed him the stone. A smile, a snigger, plays at the corner of his mouth. His eyes still on the tool in his hand, he tells me to collect more wood. When I return with three thick branches, the Silent One has the implement in his palm. He turns it around, seems to become disinterested, says something in a language I neither know nor understand and hands it back to Uncle Klaas. From below the blanket the Silent One pulls a brown paper bag and tears off a slither to make their zol. First he flattens the paper byrubbing it against the tattered jersey that covers his chest. Once satisfied, the long black fingers dig around in the orange packet of Boxer, spread it on the brown paper. From another crumpled packet his forefinger scoops a tangle of dull green twigs, which he mixes in with the tobacco. This, I knew the first time already, had to be dagga, though I didn’t ask, offered no comment, telling myself that if I were caught down here with tramps and dagga smokers, I would at least be able to say I held no knowledge of what they were smoking. That I had come only because of the pity I felt for my uncle. That I was hoping to convert him to Christianity. If the two tramps don’t tell me it’s dagga, I won’t be responsible. How was I meant to know what dagga looked like, smelt like, anyway?
Uncle Klaas hands the matches to the Silent One. Soon he is inhaling, leans forward and passes the smoking brown zol to Uncle Klaas. My great-uncle hands me the Bushmen tool and silently drags at the zol, its head going red, bits of ash fluttering down to his lap. That these two have not burnt down our fort is a wonder. Who, I speculate silendy, would get the blame if this place went up in flames? Uncle Klaas holds the zol out towards me; as usual I shake my head. He has continued to offer it to me, even though I have told him more than once that the shortest route to expulsion from the school is through smoking.
‘Don’t you think you’ll be expelled as it is — for being out here at night?’
‘I’ll say I felt sorry for you,’ I answered. ‘At worst I’ll get caned.’ And suddenly a thought had struck me and I had wanted to say that I could do as I pleased. Because Jacques would protect me. But of course, I didn’t. In the months I’d been going to him, and especially after the Cape tour, I had occasionally wondered what benefits might befall me from being the choir master’s boy. But nothing had happened to set me apart from my peers. Yet, I had become aware that even if I were not getting tangibles, there was the privilege of the weekend at Paternoster, the privilege of going to Maritzburg with him, oh, and one silly ice-cream cone and something else to lick on! And the privilege of sharing our secret. The privilege lay in the security, I thought. That I can feel safe and happy because of Jacques.
A thrill of horror had run through me as I watched Uncle Klaas and the Silent One smoke dagga the first time. This was crime committed before my eyes. The Silent One getting a glazed look in his eyes, Uncle Klaas becoming more and more animated. How aware I was of the sinful and illegal nature of what they were doing, but to use the words sin or law in Uncle Klaas’s presence seemed not only a waste of breath, but a certain way to activate his scorn. In Geestelike Weerbaarheid classes we had been shown scores of movies on the effects of drug use. One scene from these: hippies in America, walking down streets, shouting like hooligans: Make Marijuana Legal! Make Marijuana Legal. Since Kuswag’s Sunday school days I had been t
old that drugs opened the portals of hell. And here, too, often during Friday night visits by Dominee Steytler or Minister Shaer, we were read to from little religious tracts that cautioned against smoking, drugs, sex and rock music. Until Malawi I had collected these, saved them in the back of my Bible, read and reread them: The Sin of Smoking; The Sin of Sex; The Sin of Premarital Sex; The Sin of Drugs; The Sin of Jealousy; The Meaning of Revelation. And Dominic shook his head and rolled his eyes. Now the leaflets remained there, ignored. I read rather Song of Songs, Psalms, Proverbs, which I found poetic and often inspirational. A hundred times I had thought of bringing the tracts down here for Uncle Klaas to read, and each time something told me he would laugh in my face, that the codes we were taught to adhere to would be derided and ridiculed in his terrible world. Uncle Klaas was beyond salvation. And who am I, I asked myself, to speak of sin? As much as I cared for Dominic and Jacques, I knew what we were doing was wrong, that as sure as my name was Karl De Man I was going to burn in hell for doing it, for loving them. Dominic didn’t believe in heaven and hell and I’d never touched on it with Jacques. The longer I was with Jacques and Dominic, the more frequent became the moments I doubted, the less I cared that God would send me to hell for this; and, it’s just for now, I told myself over and over, when I leave here, there’s Alette, whom I really love. Surely the fact that I believe in God the father, his son Jesus and the Holy Ghost, that I try to obey the Ten Commandments, surely that will make him forgive me if I were to suddenly die in my sleep? The Ten Commandments says nothing about lying with a man as one does with a woman, even though Mathison had read those passages the previous year from somewhere in the Bible. But, those are just a few little passages, and is what we are doing hurting anyone? It was not a commandment. As Dom says about loving your neighbour as yourself: ‘If God was real, very few white people in this country would see the inside of heaven.’ So, if I burnt in hell, I’d at least be surrounded there by everyone I knew. Barring Dom and the rest of the Websters, but Dom would be there for this other thing anyway and his parents probably because they’re atheists.
‘What’s your interest in this thing?’ Uncle Klaas asks, bringing me back to the present.
‘I’m interested in the Bushmen,’ I answer. ‘Do you know that there are hundreds of Bushmen paintings in these mountains? I even read today there are some in Umfolozi, though I never knew that.’
‘Are you certain this is a Bushmen piece?’
‘Who else’s can it be? I’m looking it up in books at the moment.’
‘Are you not afraid of the Bushmen spirits?’ he says, smiling, his teeth yellow but in a perfect row.
‘Christians don’t believe in ghosts, Uncle Klaas, and neither do you.’
‘Oh, but I do. Spirits, not ghosts. Especially the spirits of the murdered. They are everywhere because they have not been laid to rest.’ I wonder whether it is the mad gene or the dagga talking.
‘Aag, Oom Klaas, that’s an old wives’ tale and you know it.’
. ‘Do I? No, Karl’tjie, these mountains of the dragon are alive with spirits. You should beware walking around at night all on your own.’
‘I’ve never been scared of the dark.’
‘Know what genocide is?’ I shake my head. He starts telling me of how the Zulus under Chaka and later the Boers under Retief exterminated the Bushmen like vermin.
‘But, Uncle Klaas, that’s because they were slaughtering the Boer oxen.’
‘Which were grazing on their hunting grounds.’
‘Well, I’m sorry that happened, Uncle Klaas, but it’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘But you go around carrying a Bushmen implement? You tell me you’re interested in their paintings? Or are you interested in the paintings only because their creators are gone, dead. Because they pose no threat to you?’
‘I find them beautiful. The simplicity appeals to me.’
‘The people or the work?’
‘What?’
‘What do you find beautiful and simple — the people or their work?’ ‘The work, of course, Uncle Klaas.’
‘Precisely, how much simpler the art is if you don’t have to deal with the people who created them.’
‘I’ve started reading about them, so I am dealing with them.’
He laughs and says I’m not half as bright as he expected.
‘Well, why don’t you leave, then!’ I’m suddenly furious. ‘Why did you send me the note then, in the first place!’
‘You came to me, I only told you I was here and invited you for a meeting. I merely said we needed another blanket. I did not force you here, did I, Karl’tjie?’
‘I didn’t ask you to tell me you were here. I could get into deep trouble for being here.’
He ignores me.
‘Are you a Christian, Uncle Klaas?’
‘You speak like a child whenever it suits you, Karl. Listen to yourself?
‘And you like a madman when it suits you. Do you think I don’t ‘ know that you’re mad! How you went to the boarding school in Brei where Bokkie and Uncle Gert were, and how like a madman you stood outside shouting, “Katie and Gert Liebenberg, I’m looking for you.”’
He laughs from his stomach, shows no sign that I have wounded him, instead he says: ‘Oh, yes! That little school at Brei, so your mother remembers! The school consisted of only one classroom. It was easy to know where they were!’
‘Didn’t it ever cross your mind that you were an embarrassment to my mother?’
‘A madman and an embarrassment. Mmmm . . . so that’s what the family says about me. Tell me in which classroom you are and I’ll come calling. Make certain history repeats itself...’ he says, laughing, the folds of his filthy jersey undulating against his chest.
‘You’re joking, aren’t you, Uncle Klaas?’
‘Only if you want me to be.’
Suddenly I am terrified that he will show up at the school. Already I hear his voice: ‘Karl De Man, ek soek jou!’ And the eyes of everyone darting towards the horrendous source of the voice standing on the quad’s lawn. Instantly I alter my tone, change the subject.
‘Do you like choir music, Uncle Klaas?’
‘We can hear you people, right down by the ford in the mornings and afternoons.’
‘Were rehearsing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. It’s to perform in Europe and for Prime Minister John Vorster in December,’ I say. ‘The concert will be broadcast live on TV.’
‘They still start you early,’ he says, gazing into the fire, nodding his head.
‘Do you know the Missa Solemnis, Uncle Klaas?’
Again he nods and for a moment I see a shadow pass over his gaze. It is the first time I am aware of feeling any sadness for him, on his behalf. Sadness is different from pity. I don’t know how, but it must be. Could it be that he had been a music lover before he went mad and that he is now recalling a time when he was a professor in Potchefstroom? There is so much I want to know about this man. I am fascinated by him as much as I fear him. He yawns and says it’s time for them to get back to sleep, else they’ll oversleep and I wouldn’t want anyone to find my embarrassment of a madman uncle sleeping in my fort, would I?
‘I am not embarrassed,’ I answer and look quickly at the Silent One, who has already started making himself comfortable. Like an old mangy dog. In my blanket. Even if he doesn’t understand a word of Afrikaans, he too must know that I’m lying. As I stand to go, I say that were doing a Wednesday-night concert in the auditorium. They could stand in the orchard beneath the building. ‘You’ll be able to hear well from there.’
Uncle Klaas smiles.
‘And,’ I say, turning to go, ‘we even do some black songs that he’ll like.’
Behind me I hear Uncle Klaas scratching together sand with which he’ll extinguish the fire.
8
Almost ten. At the front door dressed in school uniform with suitcase in one hand and lunchbox in the other. About to open the bottom door to catch up with his sister
already at the end of the asbestos driveway. Heard his mother’s voice in her and the father’s bedroom. She slammed the door of her closet. Father had just returned from a trip. Boy knew why the mother was angry and thought of quickly slipping from the door so they’d think he had already gone. But he wanted to push them, to test their limits, see how far it was to the brink. Then his father called his name and came walking down the passage; caught the boy as he pretended to try and slip from the house. The father walked to within a few paces from the boy and stood shaking his head from side to side. Inside, the boy felt the excitement of fear and the anticipation of humiliation and possible pain. Caught a whiff of Old Spice. The father looked at the boy with loathing, with hatred, his blue eyes icy, ragingly calm. He spoke softly and when the boy looked provocatively down at his shoes he shouted at him to look him in the eye like a man. He asked the boy why he did this. The boy refused to answer. The boy wished the father would die, but only after he had been beaten and shamed. The man said: ‘If you ever even think of doing it again, or if I or your mother ever even suspect you of doing it again, I will kill you.’ Then he turned around. Pleasure spread across the boy’s face as he heard the man walk away down the passage. The boy could not see because through his smile the tears blurred the driveway from which his sister had long disappeared.