by Mark Behr
His fingers or his back tired, Dominic takes a break. We talk about everything. Especially the Grade Eight and how afraid he is. There are those who say he’s way too young to play the Schumann and they’re probably just waiting for him to make one mistake. Of Schumann or Dom’s ability to play the German’s music I have no clue; but I tell him it sounds breathtaking, faultless, perfect. Words I think not only apt, but words that may boost his confidence. Whether he is truly good enough or even almost good enough to play the Schumann I don’t know, though Mervyn tells me he is. Mervyn tells me Dominic is world-class. And amongst all the talk of and rehearsing there is Ma’am’s strangeness towards him, which he says he’s sure is a passing thing. He tells me of his holiday, boating on the Vaal Dam where Dr Webster taught him to water-ski and they worried all the time about him breaking an arm or a finger. Mine with Bok in Mkuzi and Umfolozi. ‘I never knew your father was a ranger,’ he said, surprised. While saying I was sure I had mentioned it often over the years — that of course he has known — I suddenly realise that the bush is something I rarely speak about outside of our family. Just as I never speak about Tanzania. As much as they are constantly on my mind, I never speak about them. But because I think about them so often, I assume everyone knows.
Having sworn him to secrecy I have confided in him about Stephanie’s abortion. He said an abortion was nothing to be secretive or ashamed about. Mrs Webster has had three and she tells the whole world. He said she refuses to go on the pill because it muddles a womans hormones and every now and again she and Dr Webster have a little slip or the French letter tears and off she goes to London. He laughed, threw up his hands, and turned back to the keyboard, at once taking up where he had left off. As if he had just told me his mother went down the street to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken. His world, the Webster world, I think, is a world apart. No. A different galaxy from the one where I live.
‘Trying to catch up on Latin and Maths homework. Stuck in translation, unable to remember the gender of sagitta, sagittae, I lapse intodaydream. Staring at Dominic’s slender back beneath the black cotton fabric, the vertebrae of his spine visible with every movement of the flexing shoulder muscles, the white neck and short hair, head bowed forward nodding time, the fingers seem to run from his sides, again, like spiders crossing hot cement. Pulling a double page from the back of my Latin exercise book, I write: Achilles Heel — Removing the Dampers. Then begin to draw his heel and sandalled foot, tipped from the toes on the sustaining pedal. I go down on my haunches and study the hollows on either side of the tendon running down the back of his foot connecting to the heel, see the way the calf muscles tremble, ever so slightly with every suppression. He senses me behind him and still playing asks what I’m doing. Drawing your foot on the pedal, I answer. He tells me to kiss him in his neck. I say I can’t, not here, where there are no curtains and anyone can walk in. I scold him jokingly for banning me from his bed. He stops playing, swings around and kisses me, biting my lip when I try to pull away. I taste blood in my mouth.
More and more he speaks about Canada. Dr Webster is beginning to sound serious about emigrating. Please don’t go, I say. He says I can come and live in Toronto with them after I’ve finished school in Durban. You can become an exchange student, he says. You can apply to Rotary or to be an AFS. What is an AFS, I ask. American Field Scholar, he says, my cousin was an AFS. Easy as pie. And then, he says, you can stay on afterwards, Karl, yes, we can put up house together in New York or LA or Montreal. And we can learn to speak French. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soiri I don’t want to live somewhere else, I say. This is my home. I only want to see other places, not live there. I do not say I know what happens to people who leave their countries of birth.
‘Once you’ve been overseas,’ he says, ‘you’ll want to stay there for ever. And we’ll live together.’ Overseas. For ever. Together. I stare at him, not allowing myself to dream of it being a possibility. ‘We’ll have a flat, an apartment as they call it, overlooking the Hudson. Orthe Tiber, or the Thames,’ he says. I am too shy to ask what he is talking about. Ashamed of my ignorance. ‘I’ll be an acclaimed virtuoso like Paderewski or Rubinstein. And you’ll be a famous poet like who, who do you want to be?’
‘Dominic, stop it. It’s never going to happen. And I don’t like living in a flat anyway.’
‘Okay, we’ll have a house on Long Beach, looking out over the ocean. And we’ll have only four rules in our house. Same as Mum and Dad.’
‘What?’
‘No Bibles. No Sexism. No Racism.’ He pauses.
‘What is sexism?’ I ask, tentatively. I know racism is to do with black and white and Indian and coloured, and I know sex is mating and male and female. But I’ve never heard the word sex with this suffix.
‘Sexism is treating women differently from how you’d treat men, just like racism is discriminating against people because of their skin colour.’
‘But women are different from men. They’re mothers and homemakers.’
‘Says who! My mother went back to being a researcher a year after I was born. Prudence raised us. That’s why I’m so fond of Beauty. We were always taught to respect all people irrespective of race, colour or creed.’ I think of us in East Africa, each with our own houseboy. And Tobie and Chiluma, in Malawi, doing the housework for the Olvers. But those are black people. I have never heard of white men doing housework.
‘Women are meant to have children, take care of the family, Dominic. That’s the way it is all over the world. And it says so in the Bible.’
‘Exactly! That’s why that irrational, stupid book is banned from our house.’
Why aren’t you allowed to read the Bible?’
‘Were allowed to read it, like I’m allowed to go to church and Sunday school here. But we have to go to the library to read the Bible.’ ‘Why doesn’t your father want you to become Christians?’
‘Oh, it’s not my father. It’s actually mostly my mother. She says that God was created by powerful people to take all the pleasure out of the world and to make people fearful. Where people are enjoying themselves there is no fear. And where there is no fear, there cannot be a God. My parents want me to never be afraid.’ I think about Uncle Joe. He too refuses to go to church, to read the Bible. But that is for other reasons. What those are, I have no idea. I must ask him about it some time. I wonder if they’ll be coming down for Christmas. And Uncle Klaas, what he—
‘Want to hear rule Number Four?’
I nod.
‘Wash the cucumber before you put it back in the fridge.’ He waits for me to laugh. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘No, what’s so funny about that?’
‘If you’ve had the cucumber up your arse, Karl, you’ve got to wash it before you put it back in the fridge, Silly.’ I tell him he is disgusting and he says, don’t tell that to me, tell it to my mother, she’s forever saying it to my dad when he’s in a bad mood.
Labouring over the essay, which is giving me no pleasure. Every word, every image sounds contrived: The man boy crouches desperately in the grass above an enormous gaping precipice. On the opposite bank stands a figure, a statue of incomparable perfection, shimmering like green marble sculpted beneath Rodins a master’s hand. The man boy reaches out, but almost stumbles and suddenly draws back, afraid of falling down the sheer cltffs. Below him, in the dark quagmire of swirling black mists, anything may lurk, waiting to devour him. Still the statue urges beckons for the man to cross. He thinks of leaping, takes a few steps back to make a running start, but then sees and knows the chasm is too huge wide. Unable to continue, not knowing what to do with the man for two more pages, I go back to Dominic’s orange poem. That, too, seems impossible, as my list simply grows longer: Dearest, behold the ball in your hand: circular, shin, smooth, indentations, lemon, navel, green patched, China, California, scent, nostrils, peel, spray, segments, juice, Vitamin C, Marko Polo, fruit, colour, yellow, orange, moist, fluid. I know I must abandon the poem. Some things ju
st cannot be written, like some paintings cannot be completed, as Ma’am says. But to admit defeat, only days after I have been told I should fly! What if I can never again write? What if instead of being a writer I am really a painter? Suddenly I dread coming near words. I have been chasing an illusion, something for which I really have no talent. That I will after all end up a zero on a contract. Be nothing.
I go to Ma’am for advice on both essay and poem. She laughs and says I’m far too young for writer’s block and that I must simply keep at it. There is nothing she can do other than tell me to keep writing and to remember that no one told me it would be easy. ‘Take heart,’ she smiles, handing both back, ‘there are seeds of promise in these pieces. Enormous potential. Now go and do it.’ Affirmed, I go to the orange poem and add seeds to the list. But as inspiring as Ma’am’s words are, I remain unable to progress. For some reason I take to a silent blaming of Bok. And eventually also Jacques and even Dominic for my inability to produce something that will impress the breath out of» Ma’am. Justify all the hours she puts into me. If I didn’t have to worry about next year and if I didn’t love Dominic and Jacques, then I wouldn’t have so much on my mind. Then I’d be able to fly. Riding offers only a temporary escape from my malfunction.
Because of her absence at the end of last term Ma’am was unable to round off our classes on the French Revolution. After she’s handed out our answer papers from the test we now all again remember, she reads to us a description by someone who witnessed the outcome of the Revolution first hand. ‘This is an eyewitness account,’ she says, opening the book at a marker, ‘by the philosopher who has had the most profound impact on the way I see the world. He was an Irishman, like James Joyce, Bernard Shaw, W.B Yeats. He too, like many great men of their time, was persecuted for his beliefs.’ Ma’am reads slowly, allowing each word to sink in: ‘Yielding to reason at least asforceable as those who were so delicately urged in the complement of the new year; the king of France will probably endeavour to forget these events and that complement. But history who keeps a durable record of all our acts and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns will not forget, either these events or the era of this liberal rfinement in the intercourse of mankind . . . This king, to say no more of him and his queen and their infant children (whom once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted with massacre and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their Kingdom. Two had been selected front the unprovoked unresistedpromiscuous laughter; which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s bodyguard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears and led the procession, whilst the royal captives which followed in train were slowly moved along amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women . . .’
The reading completed, silence reigning over the class, Dominic steps up onto his chair. He is about to speak when Ma’am commands him get down at once. Instead of doing as she says he strikes a pose: his wrists limp and palms held upward as if in fateful acceptance or supplication and says: ‘Oh, Madame Guillotine, my head, for thee.’ Giggles are cut short when Ma’am barks: ‘Sit down, dammit, Dominic. I cannot stand effeminate boys.’
He doesn’t flinch. Our eyes move between Ma’am and him. Then, slowly, he descends, keeping his eyes riveted on Ma’am. With both feet back on the floor, still looking Ma’am in the eye, his hands at his sides, he says: ‘Yes, I’m sure you cannot, Madame. You obviously have a preference for boys who play with guns.’
Slowly, he takes his seat.
At first I too am stung only by his cheek. The audacity not only oftalking back at her, but of his defiance. Then only does the deliberate meaning of what he has said hit home. Maybe to all of us at once, also to her, for suddenly: ‘Get out,’ she says. ‘Get out of this classroom.’
‘I will not.’
Silence. No emotion on her face. ‘How dare you resist my authority! And how dare you, now, speak to me about guns . . .’ Again she tells him to get out. Again he says he will not. ‘You will leave this classroom, or else I will go.’
‘It’s up to you,’ he says.
And to our consternation, Ma’am begins to pack her bags. Her lips begin to tremble, and then, abandoning her things on the desk, she flees the room. For a few seconds we sit in stunned silence. All eyes on Dominic. Then, as if on cue, Bennie and Radys fly from their seats and swoop down on Dominic from behind. A thud as his head crashes against wood before the desk itself with him and the other two crashes and fists fly. Then I’m around my desk, on Radys, tearing at his shoulders, trying to get him off Dominic. Shouts ring out as I feel an arm go around my neck, throttling me. Through eyes popping from my head I see more bodies joining the fracas. I throw my head back, smashing it into whomever’s face is behind me. Gasping for air I turn around, ready to punch my assailant. It is Lukas, holding his nose. I drop my fist.
I turn back and grab Radys around the neck. From the corner of my eye I see Marabou peering through the door, her jaw dropped in disbelief before she hurries out.
‘Stop it!’ Mervyn and Bruin’s voices. ‘Holloway saw you.’ A fist catches me on the temple and I see stars, wonder where Dominic is, beneath all the bodies. Then Mathison’s voice fills the room: ‘Get up, all of you. This instant.’ Noise as chairs and desks scrape and half the class seems to rise off Dominic, who is the last to get up. His nose bloodied. We stand behind our desks.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Mathison asks. Dominic takes his white hankie from his shorts, rights his desk and chair and sitsdown. Mathison glares at him. ‘What, I ask you, is going on here?’ Silence. ‘Van Rensburg? Tell me.’ His eyes now on Lukas.
‘It was a disagreement, Sir.’
‘And since when do we resolve our differences like animals instead of civilised human beings?’
‘Since so-called civilised human beings dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima,’ Dominic says through the handkerchief over his nose, his elbows on the desk.
‘Who do you think you’re talking to, Webster? Stand up when you’re talking to me.’
‘You asked a question and I answered it, Sir. And I am dizzy so I’m afraid I won’t stand.’
‘All of you, go to my office. The whole class. Come on. This insolence will not be tolerated.’
‘I’m not going to be caned, Mr Mathison,’ Dominic says, his voice rising from his desk over the rest of us moving to the door. As if on order, we halt.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I am not going to be caned, Sir, that’s what I said.’
‘You will get up off your butt and into that office this minute!’ ‘You’ll have to use force to get me there, Sir. Either before or after I call my father.’ And with that Dominic, now clutching the bloodstained handkerchief in his fist, rises and walks down the aisle, passes those of us who’ve already lined up at the door, and walks from the classroom. Mathison is clearly at a loss for words.
He clears his throat: ‘I’ll deal with that insolence later. Get going to my office.’
Ma’am sits weeping in the staff dining room. Marabou is with her. Mathison goes into his office while we line up outside. One by one my classmates enter. There’s a thud and Mathison calls: ‘Next.’ Bennie comes out, holding up one finger and grinning. And so we go in, next, pause, thud, pause, next, pause, thud, pause, next, pause, thud, and with each next we get closer to the door. Boys enter, exit,walk by smiling and return to class. He hits me and I walk out grinning. I pass the line and whisper to Mervyn that its a joke.
Ma’am has disappeared
from the teachers’ dining room. Back in class were all laughs. Bennie and Radys pull down their pants to show there’s barely a red mark. An esprit de corps. Unified by our punishment and talking about the rumble in which most of us were punched, throttled or flung to the floor. Lukas gets us to straighten out rows and chairs.
‘Waar’s daai Webster?’ Radys asks. There’s a sudden lull in the buzz.
‘Where’s your little friend, De Man?’
‘Calling his daddy. Daddy, they want to hit me, do something, Daddy, give them some more money, please, Daddy.’ Radys in his dreadful Afrikaans accent, deliberately mocking Dominic’s rounded English vowels. Most of the class is of the opinion that it would be sacrilege if Dominic is not caned. Moreover, what he said to Ma’am is unforgivable. As is his cheek to Mathison. -
‘Coward, that’s what he is.’
Afraid to take it like a man.’
Ma’am comes back with red eyes and we commence the last lesson of the day.
Dominic doesn’t return and I sit wondering where he is. After class I sneak to the dorm to see whether he’s there. I ask if anyone has seen him. No one knows anything. I see Beauty entering C Dorm. I run to her. She is sorting our laundry.