by Mark Behr
Because it’s October, I suppose, but mainly because of Almeida’s astounding voice, the audience gave us a standing ovation for ‘Oktobermaand’. Didomim & Bokeneeneeie soosayok titheyok are soosure Aloelmimeidida aneedid Coc havise a tithineegog gogoineegog. It was live TV so we weren’t allowed to do encores so we left the stage while the audience was still on their feet, shouting encore, encore, more, more. In moments like that, when we sing music I love and when the audience goes wild with appreciation, I am excited and grateful ‘ about being here, proud of being part of the school and the joy we bring. Mrs Heese has just come in to see why the light is still burning. She said I could stay here and be her son, as she had only daughters. Then she brought me a glass of milk from the fridge and asked if Iwere allowed to drink milk for it could be bad for my voice, and I said, not at this time of night. Now that shes’ she’s gone, I wonder what happened to her husband. I must go to bed now. Dead tired.
13
At inspection Uncle Charlie discovered that my blanket was missing. Instantly paralysed by shock and real surprise — for I had grown accustomed to sleeping beneath only the sparse warmth of the bedspread — I was caught off guard. Then, before I could stutter some incongruous denial, I managed to come up with a lie. I said there had been a tear in the blanket — right in the centre — and that I had given it to Beauty to mend.
What if Uncle Charlie spoke to Beauty before I could get to her? I rolled around cursing myself for not having said I had no idea where the blanket went, that I hadn’t even noticed, that it had vanished from my bed; the buck would have stopped in a place I wouldn’t have had to deal with. An hour long I debated using the key to go down to the kayas, waking Beauty, telling her the story, getting her to help keep me out of trouble and the cane’s reach. Then I decided against it for fear some of the other workers would see me, and try to ingratiate themselves with Mr Walshe by telling him I had been outside in the night. And there was no way or reason to retrieve the smelly thing from our fort. Disease, smoke, fleas; it would be smelt from the other end of F Dorm. Fear, like fingers, reached for me: and then they’ll find out about the key, and Uncle Klaas, and the dagga, and Jacques, no, no, no, not that. I willed myself to stay awake, wading around my mind in search of a story to lead me safely from the labyrinths of paranoia.
By the time Uncle Charlie came through at six a.m. calling, ‘Vests, T-shirts and running shoes,’ I had been awake for an hour. Dressing at the speed of light, one takkie still in hand, I rushed downstairs before the whistle. Behind the food counter Precious was setting out “ ‘our breakfast dishes.
‘Morning, Precious,’ I smiled, slipping my foot into the takkie. ‘Where’s Beauty?’
‘Scullery,’ she said, still laying out the thick white crockery.
‘Could you call her for me, please, Precious?’ Glancing about for |? Mrs Booysen she went to fetch Beauty. I tied the shoelace. I watched ‘ ’for Beauty’s blue uniform behind Precious leaving the scullery.
‘Is coming,’ she says in response to my frown.
‘Thanks, Precious, you’re an angel.’
Beauty’s appearance is met by a huge smile of relief. She too smiles at me.
‘Morning, Beaut! I’m so glad to see you!’
‘Good morning, Karl.’
‘Beaut, I need a favour! I need another blanket in the dorm. I lied to Uncle Charlie about what I did with the other one. I said I gave it 1 to you to mend.’
‘Where is your blanket?’ she asks, displeasure altering smile to scowl.
‘You know where it is,’ I say, signalling with my eyes that I cannot talk in front of Precious.
Beauty shakes her head: ‘Eh, eh.’
‘Remember that note?’ I whisper. She nods. ‘I gave it to him. And to the one that’s with him.’
She’s now glaring at me, says nothing. Precious looks up. Our eyes — meet.
‘Will you put a blanket on my bed, please, Beauty? And don’t tell ‘ Uncle Charlie I lied.’
She shakes her head.
I cannot believe what my eyes are seeing. ‘Please, Beaut, I beg you.’ ‘No! Why do you drag me into your story?’
I am at a loss for words. This is the last thing I have been expecting; not how I had seen my escape unfolding. Nor is it how I know Beauty, stern but always smiling, always ready to help. Dominic. She’s still shaking her head as she prepares to turn and leave. I cannot let her go, this has to be resolved before PT.
‘If I were Dominic you’d do it.’ I try to sound wounded, rather than have her hear the fear rising in my voice.
She turns back. Again glares at me. ‘Dominic wouldn’t tell stories about me. I’m not doing it.’
‘I gave it to one of your people, Beauty,’ I try again, giving her a smile that is still not returned. Still she glares. The whisde. The stampede of takkies down the stairs. The time on my side gone, I grab at a brutal straw, my voice calm and deliberate: ‘You better put a blanket on my bed. If you don’t, I’ll report to Mathison that you gave me a note from a black beggar.’ Outside, the stampede had turned to small staccatos as the last of the little ones came down.
The woman facing me remains unmoved. ‘Please, Beauty. I won’t tell. Just give me a blanket, I’m cold at night and I’m going to get into trouble. I must go to PT now.’ She turns away.
Passing by the chalets where Ma’am lives, I catch up with Dominic, Mervy and Lukas. In the toilet, I answer Dom’s enquiry about where I’ve been. They are speaking about Ma’am, about the coming funeral. I pray that Beauty will still, somehow, do what I have begged. If it’s not there by tonight, I’ll ask Dominic to speak to her. I’ll think up some story about how it disappeared.
Going upstairs after PT, a neatly folded blanket has been placed at the footend of my unmade bed. My spirit soars; I can leap for joy. Once the sheets have been shaken and smoothed, I throw the blanket over, neatly folding it in with the sheets beneath the foam-rubber mattress. Then the bedspread, also tucked into neat triangular folds.
At lunch I try to mouth a thank you to Beauty as she scoops in our food. Her smile is for Dominic ahead and Bennie behind me in the queue. Her eyes refuse to acknowledge me.
*
An hour I have free after riding and before choir. The hour when the sun falls far through the auditorium windows almost up to where I sit. Engrossed in the last few pages of Dorian Gray, I am none the less , aware of an off chance Jacques might pass through alone before choir. Then we may, I hope, exchange a few words. From even a brief one-to-one interaction I may get some indication of how long I am to be banished from his room. Up here for less than fifteen minutes and Beauty passes, bucket in hand, mop in another. I look up from the book. Smile: ‘Thank you, Beauty. For the blanket. You look like Carol Burnett with that mop, Beaut,’ I try to lighten the moment.
As at lunch, she seems to ignore me. Then, as if she’s changed her mind, she pauses mid-stride, turns, paces back towards me and with her jaw set square, seethes: ‘Don’t tell stories about me, do you hear.’ ‘I’m sorry, Beauty. I had to think of something. I would have been caned.’
She looks at me, unfazed by my explanation. My excuse. In the moment she prepares to turn I say: ‘And what’s more, I wouldn’t have given the blanket to them if you hadn’t given me the note.’
‘Don’t tell stories about me; you still don’t understand.’
‘Listen, Beauty. There’s no need to be angry, it’s all sorted out. No big deal.’
‘Don’t tell stories about me; you understand!’
‘You would never speak like this to Dominic, never. You would lick his arse if he asked you. Just because of all the little presents he brings you every term.’
‘Keep your mouth off me.’
I rise from the chair: ‘Listen, it was for one of your people — the black man — I took the blanket. Stop being so ungrateful.’
‘I am not interested in what you have to say about me, what do you know about me, nothing, white boy, shut up about me.’
/> ‘Who do you think you’re talking to? Get out of here or I’ll report to Mrs Booysen that you’ve been carrying secret notes. Mathison will give you the sack . . .’
‘Uzokuzwa mfanawomlungu kuyoquma nhlamuana esinye ziyofekela, hey — I . . . Hei — i . . .’ She turns and walks away. It is as if I’ve been stricken by lightning, clueless about what she has said.
‘Go and fuck yourself black bitch,’ I whisper, just loud enough. She doesn’t stop. Glances over her shoulder and walks away. Anger, like a hot blush, through my face and arms. Then realise it is not anger. It is shame. Fear of her mentioning to Dom what I have done, how I’ve spoken to her.
When Jacques does walk by, he only winks at me. Does not tell me to come, does not say it’s time for a bit of starfishing. I am grateful. Resentful. My heart is turned into a knot: disappointment, shame, humiliation.
I run after her. Through abandoned dormitories. Hear womens voices behind the kitchen. Run down the stairs. Find her amongst some of the other girls at the scullery door. Peeling oranges.
‘May I speak to you, Beauty?’
The women go silent. She stares at me. She does not answer. Stares me down with a smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I turn and walk off. Hating her. Ready to spit in her face if she were to come near me. I have turned the corner of the kitchen when from behind I hear their laughter; a loud and spiteful exuberance they know I cannot miss. From an upstairs window I gaze down and see them still behind the kitchen in their blue overalls, seated with their backs against the white wall. Only Beauty is standing. I watch, cannot hear their conversation or their laughter this high up through the glass. All I see are the palms slapping blue-overalled thighs, the heads thrown back, brown faces smiling, teeth and tongues: Beauty, accentuating the swaying of her hips, grotesquely minces up and down the length of the scullery wall along the path I have just walked. The seated maids double over. Muted by the distance and the glass their howls none the less reach my ears. They smack the concrete with their open hands. Beauty turns on her heel to face her audience. Her mouth is pulled into a flamboyant pout andher wrists are drooped and flapping, eyelids batting. Without hearing a word, I know what she’s doing, have witnessed it on playgrounds in classrooms in shower rooms on sports fields and in dormitories, have seen it done to others and denied it could be done to me, have done it myself to others. Again I hate her and the others. Hate everyone enough that I feel verged on weeping with pain and shame. Able to kill from rage.
For one solid hour five bars. Over and over and over. Dona nobis pacem, dona nobis pacem, dona nobis pacem. I wanted only to be elsewhere. Out and away from the beastly school. The blues had me, I knew. But it was not blue I saw or felt. I was in a grey tunnel, which swirled in black and white clouds. In prep I was able to remain chirpy, laughing and fooling with the rest of the class who all seemed in high spirits after being released from choir’s monotony; Cilliers s ability to hear a single bar fifty times until he was satisfied and only he could really hear any difference or improvement from the first time we’d done it. Bastard.
After lights-out I did not for a moment contemplate leaving the school. I was terrified and exhausted. I wished it were already holiday. Just to get away from the place. For a while at least.
14
From walking in the veld and from Tony Poolie’s record Call of the Wild, no, another title I don’t remember I learnt to emulate the calls of birds and wild animals. Having mastered a new one, I’d go to the kraal to show off to Jonas and Boy. Jonas would correct me, teach me others: the hoopoo, the fruit bat, the elephant, the nightjar, the bush-baby. One I was never able to master. He did it in a way that if you closed your eyes, almost like reeds vibrating in the wind, you could hear a flock of guinea fowl pass overhead.
15
The six of us had left our fort, then still under construction, to take part in one of our kleilat fights. Kleilat was banned. Before our time a Senior had almost lost an eye, and so the fights took place in the utmost secrecy as far as possible from the rugby field where Teacher On Duty hovered, reading, talking to boys, or, if it were Buys, playing touch rugby with the Seniors. After rains, the groves downstream had perfect black clay to be moulded with grass or feathery wattle leaves into projectiles that stuck to the end of ones lat right till the moment it was meant to fly off and sting an enemy skin. Moreover, the wattle grove was far enough from the rugby field so that if at all heard, our muted cries would from upriver easily be mistaken for the play of campers down at the holiday park. So there we could scream, shout, holler, our sounds like dassies and birds ringing through the thickets as we sprung from behind tree trunks and shrubs, pounced, swinging a pliant green wattle sprout, which swished like a whip through the air, sending off the clammy bullet to slap its target between the shoulder blades, on the stomach, head or on an exposed leg or arm. T-shirts were stripped off and left in a heap well before the wars commenced, for while the smudge of wet clay on black cotton was at first visible only as a damp patch, it showed up like a blob of lint in neon the moment it dried in the sun. Cheetah slinking through the bush, our white bodies spotted where the lats had found any part of their target. These markings would be carefully washed off before we again slipped into our black PT shorts and shirts. Through the bracken we moved with stealth, hid behind shrubs and platoons of hundred-year-old tree ferns, lay quietly on broad branches, waiting for our prey to pass beneath us. While in these games most allegiances seemed to break down, and even the best of friends fired klei projectiles at each other, myself and a number of others still reserved our most vicious flicks for the most sensitive skins: Bruin and Mervyn. While many of us spared or pretended to spare Mervy, Bruin was undisputed fair game: not only because he was the class’s cleverest and biggest arse-creeper, but because a hit, even a touch almost anywhere on his body, resulted in squealing like that of a baboon hit by a slingshot or air-gun. No matter how distant one’s hide-out from the scene of the hit, Bruin made sure everyone — we feared even Teacher On Duty — knew he was not only wounded, but that he was experiencing the impact of the hit as beyond the limits of play and directly in the realm of torture. Lukas got Steven against the neck: a brief shriek pierced the afternoon, followed by the cry ‘ ‘Almeida hit,’ and Almeida was out for five minutes, which was the rule, sometimes changed to two or three minutes, depending on how much time we had. Mervy got Smith, Fritz got me, Oberholzer got Jimmy, and we’d sit out the minutes, then rise, on the prowl again. But not Bruin. He’d scream or fall to the ground, writhing in pain. We’d all be forced to leave our hiding places and descend on him, trying to calm him, ensure him he was not having a heart attack, that his vocal chords had not been destroyed by a huge projectile that struck his chest, or that the ball of clay that struck his head from Bennie’s lat had not contained a sharp stone that might have caused him permanent brain damage. ‘Watch out or your screaming might indeed burst a blood vessel in your brain,’ I sneered at him and he looked at me with red, pleading eyes. Bruin awakened something in all of us, though I in particular felt my buttons pressed by him. That afternoon it was Goossen who flung the klei: in flight the projectile must have split in three as Bruin was caught by shots on his chest, temple and one in the eye. There was no whining, no crying before or after Goossen’s cry: ‘Hit. Bruin dead.’ But within moments Goossen’s voice, in Afrikaans: ‘You guys! Come! I think Bruin’s really hurt.’ It had been a good day. At least fourteen of us Standard Fives were there. As soon as he knew we were all gathered around, Bruin presented us with a muddy smudge stretching from his right eye into his ear. ‘I’m blind, I’m blind,’ he cried, ‘my eye is gone.’ He wiped his eye furiously, tears streaming down his face. With much pleading, assuring, washing hiseye with water brought from the river in willing hands cupped together, we got him to stop. Soon he and we could see that indeed he could see.
Then, well before the whistle and while the sun was still warm enough to dry us, it was into the water, scrubbing mud that lay hidden
in the folds of nostrils, in hairlines, behind ears. Bruin called from the bank: ‘My T-shirt’s gone from the pile.’ We ignored him and carried on washing. All the time Bruin searched through the bracken. Soon it was clear from Goossen’s smirk that he had hidden the T-shirt. When Bruin’s search delivered no results, he again resorted to tears and wailing: ‘I can’t take any more of this. I can’t.’ He stomped his foot on the riverbank while he glared at us in the water, his eyes red and his cheeks puffy.
‘You’re going to burst a vein in your head,’ I teased and around me everyone laughed. From the grassy knoll where he stood crying Bruin was threatening, as he so often did, to get his father to come and fetch him, so that he could leave the school, his cheeks now a raw pink, the white of the eye that had been struck lined crimson, like the flesh of an almost-ripe plum. When we got out of the water Goossen must have quietly retrieved Bruin’s T-shirt and thrown it into the shrinking pile. Finally, with all dressed barring Bruin, one T-shirt remained.
‘Searched like your arse!’ Goossen sneered at Bruin, who dashed forward to clutch the garment to his chest.
‘Freak!’ I sniped as the group started off, the snivelling Bruin following at a distance. I caught Almeida’s eye. Although he said nothing, I read an accusation there, something that told me he found the way I tormented Bruin unappealing. Ugly. I looked away.
Moving upstream the participants drifted apart. On route back, some of us stopped to look at the impressive fort of three Juniors. Their place was rather special, one of only a few that lay below ground level. Built into a deep donga with steps leading down into the chamber, the roof was made of stumps, reeds and a leaf covering, so that it resembled its environment, almost like a trap for big game inthe Olden Days. The way I imagined Chaka had done in Umfolozi, or like the pit used to capture King Kong on his island. Planted at the fort’s four corners were bamboo poles with red flags, warning off anyone who might inadvertently step on the roof and fall the five feet into the donga. The boys took us inside, down into the large cave-like cavern where nine of us comfortably sat. It was more than double the size of ours, in which we six and no one else could possibly fit. Light came in through two windows in the roof. Into the sides of the donga shelves had been chopped. On these were an assortment of river pebbles, empty cool-drink tins, rope, plastic bags and a slingshot. In an empty peanut-butter jar stood the bloom of an enormous blood lily. We praised the Juniors for their resourcefulness and then left, talking about how we could enhance our fort by extending the thatch along the beam closer to the river.