by Mark Behr
‘I didn’t love him, Mr Mathison.’
‘Say he . . . abused you.’
‘He abused me, Sir.’
‘Now tell me what he did to you, word for word, moment for moment. How many times, where, when, where did he touch you?’ And the boy weeps as he stands before the man, and he shakes his head and he says he cannot tell.
‘Why not, why can’t you speak?’
‘Because you’re going to chase him away, I know. Like you fired Mr Samuels.’
‘What do you know about Mr Samuels?’
‘Everybody knows. It was even in the newspapers.’
The headmaster sits, his head resting in his hands. It seems he is waiting for Karl to stop crying. He slowly rises from his chair. Karl raises his head and goes quiet. Mathison again sits down.
‘I want you to tell me all the details. Or I will call your parents.’ Exhausted, no longer able to weep, he looks at the man with red, swollen eyes. He no longer fears the man. It is as if he now reads fear from the man’s stare. Mathison is the one whom the boy now sees as afraid. What have I said, Karl’s mind churns, what over the past hour has suddenly hit home to make this man fearful? And then, with the last of his bravado, mustering something of Dominic’s words spoken in a different time in a different place: ‘You can phone my parents, Mr Mathison. You can expel me. I don’t care anymore, Sir. I’m no longer afraid of anything.’
The headmaster stares at the boy in disbelief. Slowly his stare turns to a look of deep loathing. Karl’s hand around the key is sweaty and he drops the object into his gown pocket. Rubs both hands on the towelling fabric. It seems that an hour passes in which the two of them do nothing but stare at each other.
It is Mathison who breaks the silence: ‘Karl, let you and me make a pact today. Do you know what a pact is?’
‘Yes, Mr Mathison.’
‘You are proud of this school, right?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Given the choice, you would prefer not to be expelled, right?’ ‘Yes, Mr Mathison.’
‘Would you like to see this institutions name dragged through the mud?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Then, let us make a pact. That neither you nor I will ever speak about this outside these four walls.’ Mathison looks at the boy with a face again become friendly, inviting Karl to trust.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘So everything will be just the way it is. Right?’ He nods, prodding the boy to agreement. From outside comes the twittering of sparrows and from the distance the gurgling of turkeys. It is almost dawn. ‘We will not make a scandal,’ Mathison continues. ‘So that the newspapers will not destroy what is a sacred and national treasure of our country.’ Again he waits for his words to sink in. Karl nods. And, so you will go on as if nothing happened, right?’
‘You will not do anything to Mr Cilliers, Sir?’
Mathison casts his eyes around the room. ‘You just leave that to me, right? That is an issue that has nothing to do with you, right?’ ‘Yes, Mr Mathison. But if everything is to be the same then Mr Cilliers will be the same. Like he won’t be fired and he’ll still be the senior conductor. Sir?’
‘What is important here is that you don’t want to cause damage to this school and neither do I. We will not do anything to do damage to the institution.’ An extended pause, before he says: ‘I am extremely proud of you, Karl. You must trust me. Do you?’
‘Only if you promise not to do anything to Mr Cilliers, Sir.’ Mathison seems agitated. ‘I give you my word of honour that I will do nothing to that man that may hurt this institution. Okay?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And will you now give me your word of honour that you will never repeat to anyone, for as long as you live, what you have told me here tonight?’
‘I promise, Mr Mathison. I give you my word of honour.’
Light gleamed on the dew outside Mathison’s window. Then, againwith extraordinary kindness he asked Karl whether the boy would like him to call the minister: ‘How would you feel about talking to the minister about this? Maybe Dominee Steytler. Maybe he can pray with you?’
‘No, Sir. Please, Sir, I’d prefer not to.’
‘You can trust Dominee Steytler, Karl. He has dealt with everything. He is a man of deep wisdom.’
‘No, Sir. I think everything is fine, Mr Mathison.’
‘Then, I will pray with you, Karl.’ And Mathison came around his desk. Kneeling he asked Karl to do the same. His eyes already closed, Karl suddenly felt sure that he was being looked at. He opened his eyes. He turned to find Mathison’s gaze piercing his.
‘De Man. Have you been smoking?’
‘No, Sir.’
Mathison shook his head. Karl knew that the man knew he was lying. Still, Mathison again closed his eyes. He prayed a long prayer, thanking God for guidance for both himself and Karl, thanking God that he had given them the wisdom to not act rashly and to approach a terrible situation with calm and reason. He asked God s forgiveness for Karls sins and thanked God for the blessed promise of eternal life given to those who turn from sin. When the prayer was over, he asked Karl for the other key. The boy retrieved it from his pocket, placed it into the waiting hand. As the boy was about to leave, Mathison held out the Bible from which he had read: ‘Here,’ he said. ‘It is yours. You should read it more regularly, Karl. Your salvation lies in those pages. Not in Shakespeare.’Taking the book, Karl felt himself again grow flustered.
‘Thank you, Sir.’ And it must have been then, as he walked from the office, that it struck him that his diary was hidden in the cut of his mattress. Mathison could not have found it. No one, not even Dominic, knew where it was hidden. He looked down into his trembling hands: The Living Bible. On the cover pictures of children with balloons. High-rise buildings. Streets with neon lights. A man smiling.
Trees. Ripe fruit. A young woman with long hair laughing. He opened the covers and looked for the photograph of Alette, found it at Psalm 23. He rushed upstairs. Walked on his toes through C Dorm which was already bathed in light. Into E Before pulling back the covers, he felt for the hard spot beneath the pillow. The diary was safe. Thank you, thank you, sweet Jesus. You are real after all.
Still thanking God that everything had worked out, he must have fallen asleep. An hour later Uncle Charlies call of Wakey, wakey, rise and shine, shorts, vests, takkies roused him. Groggy and with a headache throbbing against his skull, he dressed for morning PT. He wondered how he was going to be able to run in his exhausted state. He fell in with the others and asked after Dominic. When Mervyn said that Dominic was packed and ready to leave Karl again thought with shock for the first time of the previous day’s events. For the first time since using Dominic and Ma’am as a feeble excuse for his sneaking out, his mind now became fixated on anything but himself. He started running with the pack, casting a gaze over his shoulder to see whether Dominic was maybe somewhere at an upstairs window. Should he turn back? Tell the rear prefect he was ill? But the thought of Mathison seeing him, of being found out for gippoing PT a mere few hours after returning from the brink of expulsion, drove him on with the group. With every shock of his running shoes pounding the gravel and while around him boys chattered and laughed until they grew breathless, he thought: please, please, God, Father, Holy Spirit. He prayed: let that woman apologise. Don’t let Dominic go. I will become a good Christian. I swear on my mother and father’s lives I will never do anything against the Bible again. I will be a good and disciplined boy. I will not do unnatural things with Dominic or Jacques again. With your help, sweet merciful Jesus, these urges will disappear. I will never smoke dagga again and risk becoming a drug addict. I will confess to the world my “disgusting sins and be an example of Your Salvation. No more subterfuge in my life, ever. Please just keep Dominic here for me and I will become a minister of Your Glorious Church. I will become like St Francis of Assisi. I will be selfless, I will be the most humble man on earth. I will become a fisher of souls for Your Church. Or any
thing You command or expect of me. I will die in Your service. I will listen for Your voice and I will hear You. I will study Your Word and know it by rote as I know the Psalms and the Song of Songs. Just let Dominic stay. That is all I ask of You: let my friend stay with me for he is all I have and all I have ever loved.
By the time they were almost back at school he realised that morning PT had not been the torture he had thought it would be. Either from his intense prayer or from the pounding, the headache had disappeared. He thought of choir, of facing Jacques. He would go to him directly after choir and explain everything about how he had thought that they had found his diary, that Mathison had tricked him. Misled him. Bastard. No, Mathison is a man of God, forgive me, Father. I will tell Jacques that Mathison has been reasonable about the whole thing. If I can get to Dominic before Dr Webster arrives, I can tell Dominic to go and speak to Mathison. Just explain things. How stupid of me, he thought, I should have told Mathison last night that he had to save Dominic. I should have thought of a way. That’s what Dominic would have done had he been the one to get caught: he would have tied his silence to my salvation. Instead I was so frightened of what was going to happen to me that I thought only of myself, my own survival. Forgive me, Father. Maybe I can go and speak to Ma’am. Tell her what was wrong with what she said to Dominic. Why it is so hurtful.
Instead of entering F he huffed and puffed and bundled into G with the others. Dominic’s bed was stripped. The faded plaid curtain to his locker rolled back. Empty shelves. Could it be that in the halfhour jog Dr Webster had come? That they’d already left? He wanted to run downstairs, to see if his friend was still there. Again the events of the night and the resolutions of the dawn kept him in check.
Instead he rushed to his own locker, dressed and before the bell rang for breakfast found himself downstairs. From classroom to classroom. Peaked into the teachers’ dining room. In the foyer he saw Dominic’s leather suitcases, his rolled sleeping bag. His music case. Everything packed and stacked against a wall. At least he was still here. He found Dominic in the phone booth beside the dining room. His friend, speaking in soft tones into the handset, looked spent. Had he too not slept the night? The breakfast bell rang, but he waited for Dominic to finish.
‘Hold on, Dad. Karl’s here.’ And smiling at Karl he said, ‘Mathison called Dad this morning at six. He had a meeting with Ma’am late into the night and it sounds as if she’s going to apologise. Go to breakfast, I’ll see you there in a bit.’ They smiled at each other and Karl’s eyes brimmed with tears as he turned to join the line falling in for breakfast. He prayed a frevent prayer of thanks and praise.
Percy Johnstone was the prefect at breakfast who allowed Karl to reserve a seat even though that was not permitted. Percy, big, fat and jovial, said he hoped Karl was right, that Dominic would indeed be coming to breakfast. And before Buys spotted the bare seat. Grace was said and they fell to eating their porridge. To Karl it seemed that everyone — even at the table behind him — was speaking about Webster this, Webster that. Only Karl himself said nothing and Percy asked why he was so quiet. He answered that he hadn’t slept well. Radys, sitting beside Bennie at the bottom end from Karl, quipped that Karl had been crying about his little girlfriend who was being expelled for dungpunching and terrorism. The prefect told Radys to restrain his brutality and to show empathy with those in trouble. While Karl had never much cared for Percy Johnstone, the ungainly older boy momentarily seemed a new best friend.
Breakfast was near over when a hush descended. Dominic was entering the dining hall. He wound through the tables and walked to Buys.
‘Permission to join for breakfast, Sir.’
‘Go ahead, Webster.’ Buys said, deliberate disdain on his face.
The hall remained silent and all eyes followed Dominic as he walked to the counter. Florence and Precious were serving. Florence smiled at Dominic and then, in a voice loud enough for the entire dining hall to hear, Dominic said: ‘I won’t be leaving after all, Florence. Ma’am will be apologising to me later in the morning, in front of our whole class.’ From around him Karl heard an angry murmur ripple through the dining hall. Florence, who barely spoke English, looked at Precious as though she had been made an unwilling accomplice. Dominic said something else that Karl couldn’t hear and then walked, head held high, to where he had seen his place reserved.
‘Eat your food,’ Buys barked and at once the sounds of spoons against porridge plates filled the hall.
‘Morning to you all. Lovely day, don’t you think?’ Dominic said. Only Karl and Percy acknowledged his defiant greeting.
‘Pass the sugar, please,’ Dominic spoke to Bennie and Radys. Neither moved to pass the container. Karl stretched out his arm only to have Radys pull the bowl just beyond his reach.
‘Dietz,’ the prefect snapped. ‘Pass that sugar bowl to Webster.’ Radys, with a smirk, spun the bowl over the linoleum and it settled just beside Dominic’s porridge plate.
‘You’re looking for trouble today, aren’t you, Dietz?’ the prefect said.
‘The trouble’s sitting right there next to you, Johnstone,’ Radys quipped and went back to eating.
Mathison, at assembly, was freshly shaved and as well groomed as ever. Nothing in his bearing gave away the events of the night. At his announcement that there would be no morning choir, Karl suspected at once that the cancellation had something to do with Jacques. In an instant Dominic, right beside him, was forgotten as he now became obsessed with what was happening to Jacques and whether something could still, after all, go wrong in the agreement he had with Mathison.
No one in class spoke while they awaited Ma’am. A prefect came to tell Dominic that Mathison wanted him in his office. The moment Dominic left class, the hushed speculation began. Would Ma’am be forced to apologise to a snot-nose? It was a disgrace. If she apologised the least Dominic would have to do was apologise to her. What was so terrible about what she had said anyway? Everyone hates girlish boys. No secret in that. She said it for his own good. If she apologised she’d be as good as giving him a passport to continue being a fairy. A third of the class participated in the discussion. Two others sat quietly, listening, paging through books, some talking amongst themselves about other things. Karl sat with The Brothers Karamazov open in front of him. Reading, but not taking in a word. Eavesdropping on the conversations around him, he tried to turn a page at approximately the time he guessed it would have taken him to read and understand it.
‘Here they come!’ came a whisper and the room went quiet. Almost at once the class stood as Ma’am and Dominic entered. The class greeted her and she gave them permission to sit.
‘I would like you all to know that I have apologised to Dominic for what I said to him in class yesterday. I spoke in a moment of anger, without thinking, I had not intended to hurt him and I regret having spoken the way I did.’ She faltered for a moment and then told the class to open their Maths homework.
‘Ma’am.’
‘Yes, Benjamin?’
‘Now that you’ve apologised to him, don’t you think he should apologise to you?’ Murmured agreement from the desks in Bennie s corner.
‘It’s up to Dominic, but as far as I’m concerned the issue is now closed.’
‘I will not apologise, Ma’am, with all due respect,’ Dominic said quickly from his seat. ‘What I said I stand by.’ His voice still carried the defiant tone. Karl looked down onto his desk.
‘Well, we’ve got work to get through. Let’s look at that Maths homework.’ Karl took the Maths book from his desk, certain that he would be in trouble for not having completed a single problem. Yet upon opening his book, it was all there, in his own handwriting, done, obviously during the previous evening’s prep. Still, he could not remember ever having seen the sums. Where had he been last night? The entire previous day and most of the events of the night seemed to have vanished from memory. He was suddenly exhausted, barely able to draw the crosses beside the answers.
Shortly
before evening choir, Mathison had a prefect call Karl from where he had fallen asleep on his arms at his desk. Still half asleep, he arrived at Mathison’s office. The headache had returned. He stood in the same spot from where he had faced Mathison less than twelve hours before. Through a tired smile, Mathison asked Karl whether the idea of helping Lukas and Mr Walshe in the dairy might appeal to him. Karl answered that he had often been a little envious of Lukas, as he too enjoyed the farm.
‘We’d like it if from now till the end of the year you helped Lukas in the dairy.’
‘What about choir, Sir?’
‘I think it best if we agree that Mr Cilliers has called you for a voice test and that your voice is going.’
That was all. All he needed for Karl to know that he would no longer be singing. That he would be telling the others and his family that his voice was breaking.
‘You will tell everyone that Mr Cilliers called you for a voice test, right? Because of some odd sounds during choir. And that it was decided you couldn’t continue. You understand, right?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘This is a reasonable resolution, right?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Let your voice jump a few times in class, right? So you’ll help out with Lukas in the dairy, right? I’ll tell Lukas myself. You’re content with that Karl, right?’
‘Yes, Sir. And, Sir, my parents?’
, ‘They will never know. As long as you keep our pact. Remember, loose lips sink big ships. Of course you will have to leave the school, though, Karl. In December, of course, once you’ve finished Standard Six’ He paused, and nodded at Karl. ‘Because your voice is breaking, right?’
‘Will you not do anything to Mr Cilliers?’
‘Your conductor and I have an agreement that is really none of your business. Now leave and forget that this ever happened. Karl, one more thing: you will not speak to Mr Cilliers again. Never. Not on the premises of this school, do you understand? If I as much as see you near him or hear anyone say that you were seen in his company, I will rescind this agreement with immediate effect, right? Both you and he will be out of here at the drop of a hat. Is that clear?’