The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  who slunk into a dragon’s lair

  and with a dragon mated there,

  two beasts by lust transmogrified

  into a monster twice their size

  who kept the name of Claws von Snout

  and ever since has roamed about

  the desecrated Land Without.

  I know that you girls know him well,

  his angel wings and dragon tail,

  his ripping jaws and cutlass teeth,

  his scalpel claws, scale-shedding feet—

  we’ll be devoured by von Snout

  if we should stray into Without.

  The more you speak of Special Love

  the more unspecial it becomes—

  nothing more than ordinary,

  something merely momentary.

  It’s better not to talk about it:

  we are not van Houts without it.

  And if it somehow fades away—

  you may not like what I must say—

  the van Houts will grow faint of heart,

  a great storm from Without will start,

  bring down the walls of Hans van Hout,

  Within will turn into Without,

  Without will turn into Within,

  and everything will be a sin.

  Today will cease to be today,

  there will just be yesterday,

  and we will have no memory

  of Special Love or family.

  Each of us will be unknown,

  forgotten, lost, each one alone,

  helpless to resist von Snout,

  the dragon-angel from Without

  who leads the ones who disapprove

  of nothing more than Special Love.

  We call them the authorities;

  they interfere with families.

  If we break this solemn promise,

  authorities will come for us—

  they will take us from each other,

  mother, daughter, sister, father.

  They’ll separate the Clan van Hout—

  we won’t be six when they’re about.

  Each one of us will be alone,

  each one of us will be just one,

  each one in a different place—

  there won’t be one familiar face.

  The Land Without has many dangers,

  not just von Snout but these Strangers—

  they don’t know us, we don’t know them,

  but they’re in charge of everyone.

  They disapprove of everything

  except the rain; they hate the sun—

  they even disapprove of fun.

  The food they cook is terrible;

  it will make you miserable.

  We must not wind up in the hands

  of Strangers from the other lands,

  the followers of Claws von Snout

  who chews girls up and spits them out.

  So let’s recite the Vow of Right,

  the one we end with every night:

  “Special Love is just for Daddy;

  it isn’t for just anybody.

  And Daddy loves no one but us—

  he’ll never love us any less

  than he does now with all his heart;

  we just have to do our part

  to lift his spirits when he’s sad—

  after all, he is our dad.

  “I swear to God and cross my heart,

  I promise I will do my part

  to hold the family van Hout

  above the One that lurks Without.

  All we have is one another,

  mother, daughter, sister, father.

  We are the ones who understand

  what happened in the Netherlands,

  but we will never speak of it—

  it will always be a secret.

  The same is true of Special Love—

  it’s just for us and God above.

  “So once again I make my vow,

  I make it here, I make it now.

  I pledge my loyalty to you,

  my mother and my sisters, too,

  but most of all I promise Dad,

  I promise that I won’t be bad.

  I swear myself to secrecy

  as part of Glormenethalee.”

  WADE

  One afternoon, when Rachel was at her yoga class, Fritz called and invited us to visit him and Carmen at their house in Kommetjie, about an hour southeast of Cape Town, on the Cape Flats. “Come out next week,” he said. “You guys should visit us at least once while you’re here. I’m inviting Bethany and Clive, too.”

  I told him I would ask Rachel, which I did when she got home. “I suppose we have to sooner or later,” she sighed.

  Clive had to teach, but Bethany said she would go with us.

  They lived half an hour inland because, Bethany said from the back of the car, the coast was too bourgeois for Fritz’s liking.

  “That means he can’t afford it,” Rachel said as she drove along the winding coastal road, which was even more hazardous than the road to the Twelve Apostles. She drove slowly, much to the irritation of drivers behind her, who blew their horns incessantly until they had a chance to pass, coming within inches of us as they went by on the safer side. At the slightest nudge from them, our car would have plunged off the cliff.

  “This is very relaxing,” Bethany said. “It’s so nice to get out and see the countryside. Living to tell about it would be a bonus, but that’s just splitting hairs.”

  Rachel glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. “If you’d like to drive, be my guest,” she said.

  “I wasn’t criticizing your driving, sweetie,” Bethany said. “After all, you’d perish with me and that would be punishment enough. How are you doing, Wade? Are you feeling emasculated because you’re not driving the car?”

  “I’d be doing better if I’d thought of putting a couple of bags of sand in the trunk for some ballast,” I said.

  “The baby and I will have to do,” Bethany said. “All eighty pounds of us.”

  We made it to Fritz and Carmen’s house, a square, stucco-sided bungalow with a roof of gleaming, corrugated tin. There were a goat and a pair of chickens in the yard.

  “What does Fritz do with all the money he makes from selling drugs?” Bethany said. “Does he barter with the Bantu for goats and chickens?”

  The front door of the bungalow flew open and Carmen, in a T-shirt, denim shorts and flip-flops, ran down the steps, waving her arms as if signalling to Rachel from half a mile away.

  “We’re cleansing,” she shouted. “Nothing but water and green grapes for the next six days.”

  “Otherwise known as the poor woman’s anorexia,” Bethany said. Carmen seemed not to hear her. “Hi, Carmen,” Bethany shouted, but Carmen did not return her greeting or look at her.

  “Don’t get out of the car,” Carmen said. “We’re all going on a road trip.” She pointed at Fritz’s car, a dented, rusting Saab plastered all over with peace signs and decals bearing clenched black fists and anti-apartheid slogans. “You guys follow us.”

  “I’m not going down that cliff road again without taking a break,” Rachel said.

  “No, no, don’t worry, we’re going the other way.”

  The front door of the house opened again and Fritz appeared. Clad in his usual white V-necked, bluebell-bordered smock, his thick black chest hair looking like an undergarment, he jumped off the side of the steps, a khaki bag, also plastered with peace signs and black fists, slung over one shoulder.

  “Well, he’s just a one-man salute to peace, isn’t he?” Bethany said.

  F
ritz waved to us and made a “follow me” motion with his hand. He and Carmen jumped in the Saab, which, despite its dilapidated look, started with a roar.

  It turned out that, when Carmen said we were going the other way, she meant we were going to continue south on the treacherous coast road. “We don’t have to follow them to our doom, Rachel,” Bethany said as Fritz turned left. “We could just go back to the city.”

  “If he doesn’t stop in ten minutes, I’ll turn around. I think I’d rather go off a cliff than be teased by Fritz for the next six months about how I couldn’t keep up with him.”

  “I choose death by teasing rather than by a fiery crash,” Bethany said, “but I might not if I was a man who didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.”

  “You’re in fine form today, Bethany,” I said. “Enjoy it. Soon, your fine form will be that of three basketballs tied together.”

  She laughed, and so did Rachel, until Fritz began to pull away from us in a cloud of red dust.

  After about five minutes, Fritz turned right onto a steep dirt road flanked by brush so thick and high it blocked our view of everything but his car—and soon, our view of that was blocked by dust. “This is like driving in a snowstorm,” I said, trying not to think of the possibility that Fritz might have to stop suddenly.

  The slope began to lessen. The dust cleared. Fritz was well ahead of us now. Below stretched the bluest sea I had ever seen. A beach at least a mile long extended about half that distance from the water, where it ended in a kind of breakwater of thick brush. It looked as if no one had ever set foot on the pure white sand. It was not strewn with kelp or bordered by driftwood. It was empty of everything—people most conspicuously, given that it was superior to any beach I had seen so far in South Africa. We parked at the north end, beside the Saab. We got out and, for a few seconds, the five of us stared, wonderstruck, at the sight in front of us. “It’s so beautiful, Fritz,” Bethany said, as if complimenting him on one of his artisanal creations.

  He nodded, pulled a Nikon camera out of his shoulder bag and, dropping to one knee, took a picture of the beach. “Fritz takes the best photographs,” Carmen said.

  “You’d think this place would be very popular,” Bethany said.

  “Too far out of the way for tourists,” Fritz said, winking at me.

  “What’s it called?” Rachel asked.

  “I have no idea,” Fritz said. “Nothing, I hope. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Rachel, Bethany and Carmen took off their flip-flops and began to wade, three abreast, in the shallow waves. “Oooh, the water is so warm,” Rachel said. “We must have crossed over onto the Indian Ocean side. It’s not like the water at Clifton.”

  “No,” Fritz said, “but it’s not the Indian Ocean. It’s just that the water here is shallow for a long way out.”

  “Join us, Wade,” Rachel said.

  “Maybe in a bit,” I said, not wanting to intrude on this rare moment of sisterly togetherness.

  “The three of you hold hands and look at me,” Fritz said, and they did, the three of them wading through the water. “Beautiful, just beautiful,” Fritz said, snapping picture after picture as he shuffled backward along the water’s edge. “Too bad Gloria’s not here,” he said. “She would complete the picture.”

  “Why don’t you walk in the water with us?” Rachel called to me again.

  Before I could answer, Fritz said, “A man would throw off the symmetry. Besides, Wade is almost as white as the beach.”

  “I burn easily,” I said. “I’d have worn a hat if I knew we’d be going to the beach.”

  “Just go with the flow, Wade,” Fritz said. “Today’s flow, not the flow of history. The English won the Boer War, but the Boers got the last laugh—we got the Cape, South Africa, that is. Unfortunately, we fucked it up big time, oppressing our black brothers.” He snapped a picture of me. “Wade the oppressor,” he said, “plundering our women. Tsk tsk tsk. There’ll be no oppression and plundering in the new South Africa. The revolution is coming. God help the oppressors then. Whites like Carmen and me, the ones who helped the blacks and didn’t call them “coloureds,” will be welcome in that new South Africa. The rest will be in some very deep shit.”

  “And you,” Bethany said, “you’ll be the official photographer of the revolution.”

  “You bet your skinny patrician ass I will,” Fritz said.

  “Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals,” Bethany said, flipping Marx’s famous dismissal of religion and quoting from a movie I had once seen. I wished I could think of something to say, but nothing wittily dismissive came to mind. There was something about Fritz that stifled, in everyone but Bethany, verbal response of almost any kind. Perhaps it was that I knew that nothing but a good pummelling would shut him up—and I couldn’t help wondering about that knife of his, though I hadn’t seen it since the day I’d first met him in St. John’s.

  Rachel, Bethany and Carmen waded ashore as we neared the end of the beach, the three of them still holding hands, Rachel between her two older sisters—the sight made me think of the many photographs in the albums of them as children, all dressed alike.

  “We’re on a mission of mercy,” Carmen said as she pulled her hand from Rachel’s.

  “A mission of mercy?” Bethany said, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked about for signs of other people. Fritz put his camera back in his shoulder bag and began to walk away from the beach over a large sand dune. He beckoned for us to follow.

  “Where are we going, Fritz?” Rachel called, glancing worriedly at me. Fritz crested the sand dune and disappeared down the other side.

  “Wait for me,” Carmen shouted after her husband, and ran to catch up with him.

  Rachel, Bethany and I plodded upslope through the sand. When we reached the top, Fritz and Carmen were waiting for us below. We followed them along a narrow path that wound through a grove of palm trees. At the end of it, we came upon a corrugated iron wall with a gap in the middle that afforded us a clear view of what might have been a long-deserted black township—there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  “No, no, no, no,” Bethany said. “This is not a good idea.”

  “Believe me,” Fritz said, “they already know we’re here. They’ve seen us coming for quite a while. That’s why they’re all indoors or hiding somewhere. That and the heat.”

  “What’s up, Fritz?” I said.

  “What’s up?” Fritz grinned at Carmen, who loudly laughed. “What’s up is that, if not for me, you would have had the piss beaten out of you by now, and the girls, well, I think you know what would have happened to them.”

  “We should get the fuck out of here right now,” Bethany said.

  “Everything will be just fine as long as no one runs or cries,” Fritz said, looking at me. “Did you hear me, Wade? No running, no crying.”

  “Fuck off, Fritz,” I said, peering through the gap in the wall behind him. A small yellow dog watched us, sitting on its hind legs in the middle of the narrow road that ran between two rows of windowless tin houses.

  Fritz patted his shoulder bag. “I have goodies to distribute,” he said.

  “Fritz is the Johnny Appleseed of the revolution,” Carmen said, looking expectantly at Fritz, who didn’t acknowledge her.

  “No one will bother you as long as you stay put,” he said. “They know me here. I come here at this time of day once, sometimes twice, a week.”

  He went through the gate-like gap and was gone from sight. Carmen sat on the sand and patted it with her hand to suggest that we all do the same. “No wonder there’s no one on the beach,” I said.

  “It’s fine,” Carmen said. “I wait here by myself sometimes and nothing ever happens. Sit down. Time for a toke, I think.” She fished in the back pocket of her jeans, withdrew a crumpled joint and lit it with a plastic cigarette lighter she took from the pocket of her top
. She took a long drag, then held the joint toward us. Getting no takers, she shrugged and put the joint back in her mouth. “I’m going to get so stoned if you guys don’t help me smoke this joint. Especially since I’ve had nothing but green grapes and water for days. Cleansing is good for you, it really is, but I’d just as soon sleep through it.”

  I shot Rachel a questioning look. “I think we’re okay,” she said. “If we turn back now, we might provoke them.”

  “Jesus,” Carmen said. “Provoke them? They’re not dogs. Everyone’s a liberal in South Africa until they wind up in a place like this.”

  “I don’t think everyone’s a liberal in South Africa,” Bethany said. “I think we might be related to a few non-liberals. And that leaves out the other ninety-nine per cent of the white population. Meanwhile, I think I’ll just stroll back along the beach.”

  “You won’t make it halfway to the cars,” Carmen said. “Not by yourself. Too tempting. They leave me alone because they know that, if they don’t, Fritz won’t come back. No one will come back. But you—well, they don’t know who you are to Fritz. They don’t know you’re his sister-in-law. Some of them might not care because they’re wrecked enough already. I’d stay put if I were you. Sends them a message. If you don’t seem to be afraid, you must be someone important to Fritz, or just important, period, someone who’s used to these missions of mercy. No one sells to them for less than Fritz does. He practically gives the dagga away. So no one fucks with him.”

  We sat on the ground in the shade of the palm trees, waiting for Fritz to return. Every now and then, I looked through the gap in the iron fence. The township seemed like some sort of temporary workers’ camp. In front of each of the metal shacks was a circle of scorched stones, makeshift fireplaces. Clotheslines from which brightly coloured clothing hung sagged almost to the ground, the clothes hanging limp because the wall blocked the ocean breeze.

  A few small boys clad only in shorts eventually appeared at the opening to look at us, their wide eyes full of fear and curiosity. Rachel tentatively waved and they disappeared for a second behind the wall, reappearing one by one.

  Then an old man arrived at what I had come to think of as the gate. He was barefoot, wearing slacks so smeared with dust I couldn’t tell their colour. He was shirtless but wore a tattered black sports jacket and a grey stocking cap beneath a dented fedora. He looked nattily dishevelled. He smiled and raised his hat to us. Carmen waved and held up what was left of the joint. One hand in the pocket of his slacks, he gingerly made his way to her, took the joint, raised it to his mouth and drew so deeply from it he had to let it drop before it burned his fingers. “I have another one,” Carmen said, standing up and reaching into the back pocket of her shorts again.