Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (12 page)

But I felt no sense of victory as the metal doors closed and the great engines started up. The machine that carried me was shaking with tremendous power, but there was no power left in me; I
felt empty, hollowed out.

I was taken to hospital in Pretoria. There I was treated with brusque jollity by nurses who monitored my progress with charts and graphs. I only ever saw one doctor, who came by every morning to
sit next to the bed and make furtive notes while he spoke to me.

‘Can you try to describe how you feel?’

‘I can’t put it into words, really.’

‘Try.’

‘I feel far away from everything. I feel... dislocated. Not part of life.’

‘Whose life?’

‘Mine. Everybody’s.
Life
.’

‘Mmm. Go on.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t seem to care about anything.’

‘Mmmm.’ He was scribbling furiously.

‘That’s all, really,’ I said. ‘That’s how I am.’

My father came to see me. He sat in a chair at the head of the bed, where the psychologist also sat. My father was uneasy. He clasped his hands between his knees and shifted from buttock to
buttock.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘Yup,’ I replied.

‘Do you want to talk about anything?’

‘No. Not that I can think of.’

He looked pained. He seemed to feel that something had happened to alter me, and that he couldn’t speak to me in the normal way. He sighed and cast around him and said, ‘It’s a
nice room they’ve put you in.’

‘No, it isn’t. It’s a horrible room.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a nice room at all.’

A week or two later I was sent down to 2 Military Hospital in Cape Town. My mother was acting in a play at the time, which was why, she told me, she couldn’t come up to Pretoria to visit
me. But now she spent every morning with me, bringing books and chocolates and tapes. She chatted without stopping, mostly about herself and her life, but the endless noise and bustle were somehow
comforting to me.

It was there I was told that I’d be discharged.

It was there I was given Valium for the first time.

And it was there, on the day I was to leave, that my mother confessed about Godfrey. I had packed up my bags, and they lay on the floor. An unseasonal rain was falling outside. We were waiting
for some forms to be brought to the ward, which I had to sign. My mother leaned forward, wetting her lips, her eyes shining.

‘There’s something I have to tell you. I was going to wait till you were out of here, but I just can’t hold it in any more.’

I looked warily at her. ‘What is it?’

‘I think I’m in love,’ she said. ‘His name is Godfrey.’ Then she told me the rest and sat back expectantly, her palms pressed together.

‘Right,’ I said. None of it mattered very much to me.

‘Well, is that all you can say? What do you think?’

I smiled and shrugged. I had nothing to say. I looked at my mother as she sat there on the bed, waiting for me to be amazed and awed by her life. At that moment a shaft of light, blued by the
rain, fell on her face: like the actress she was, she turned towards it, finding her spot. Then she smiled, and the smile became a laugh: a round, silvery sound, like a coin, which fell from her
throat and tinkled down onto the ground. She looked very beautiful in that moment.

‘Ah, Africa,’ she said.

And we sat there, silently waiting.

It felt wrong to be listening to the sounds of love-making between my mother and her boyfriend, so I went downstairs to get away. I had no clear idea of where I was heading. I
thought of a walk again, out to the long jetty, but when I got to the foyer the early news was on and I sat down to watch. One of the main items dealt with rumoured SWAPO incursions from the north,
supposedly timed to sabotage the elections; and this was followed by a story about ‘the Andrew Lovell case.’

They showed a still photograph of him, which turned out to be the same image featured on Godfrey’s posters. Then they cut to an interview with the porcine police spokesman, smirking behind
his moustache. ‘The South West African police,’ he told us smugly, ‘have detained somebody in connection with this murder.’ A forty-three-year-old man, an Irish national,
had been taken into custody in Windhoek. The man, it was believed, belonged to an undercover white extremist group and was a former member of the IRA. He had not yet been charged, but he was
‘assisting police with their investigations.’ A second arrest was imminent.

The police official seemed pleased. He spoke of the ‘dedication and commitment’ of the security forces. ‘Round-the-clock work made this possible.’ Working with few clues
and ‘in the face of anti-South African propaganda’, the results of the investigation were a ‘triumph for the impartial work of the officers concerned.’

The camera showed us the face of the suspect: a square face, with close-cropped hair, military in appearance. The nose was skew, broken perhaps; the eyes were dark and blank. The photograph was
a little blurry and indistinct, like the facts surrounding the man himself: who was he, why was he being offered up like this, who was he working for? In the murky waters of South African politics,
it was hard to know anything.

I was caught up in the story, its various motives and outcomes, while the news had passed on to stories further afield – ‘unrest in Soweto.’ I wasn’t listening, and it
took a voice close to my ear to break my reverie. The voice said:

‘He deserved it.’

I looked up. At the next table was a meaty man in khaki, in his late thirties, with a spade-shaped beard. He gave the impression of quiet power. His eyes – set wide in a flat, furrowed
face – were as blue and limpid as gas.

‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but I think he deserved it.’

His accent was Afrikaans and his voice slightly hoarse. But it wasn’t an ugly voice; it had a measured, calm tone.

‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but I have no time for people who turn their backs on their own kind. It’s all right for blacks who want to change the system
– if I was in their place, I’d want the same thing. But whites who go joining the black side... I ask you, what do they want?’

‘Maybe he wanted justice,’ I said. The big word – ‘justice’ – sounded false in my mouth.

He repeated the word, tasting its strangeness. ‘Justice. Justice. Now that sounds funny to me. Justice for one man means a raw deal for someone else. Human nature, wouldn’t you
say?’

I looked down at my shoes.

‘Or are you going to tell me,’ he went on, ‘that you believe in justice, peace, truth? Is that what you believe? You seem like an intelligent young man to me. Surely you know
something about how the world works by now. Surely you know it’s dog-eat-dog, that’s the only big truth out there.’

I didn’t know what to say. In some way, he sounded reasonable and worldly to me. I didn’t want to come across as naïve and silly, though all the ideals he was mocking had seemed
obvious and real till a moment ago.

‘The name’s Blaauw,’ he said, ‘Dirk Blaauw.’ He held out a big, brown hand. ‘I’ve seen you in the bar. I’ve seen you with your mother and her
friend.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How did you know she’s my mother?’

He tapped his head knowingly and winked. He had a sense for things, he meant; life held no big surprises for him.

‘And what is your name?’

‘Patrick Winter.’ I shook his hand.

‘Ah, now that’s a name. A very English name. But with a lot of history, a lot of mystery. It sounds like the name of somebody with a
story
to tell.’

It was hard to tell if he was mocking me or not. His voice and face seemed full of earnestness and irony at once, so that both, or either, were possible.

‘Who are you going to vote for,’ I asked him, ‘in the election?’

‘I don’t live here. I’m a South African, like you.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘West coast. Near Malmesbury. I’m a farmer.’

‘My grandmother has a farm in that area too.’

‘
Ja
? What is her name?’ When I told him, he made an exclamation of amazement. ‘Man, we are nearly neighbours. And you? Are you from the farm too?’

‘We’re from Cape Town,’ I said carefully.

‘And what are you doing in this part of the world?’

‘Um, we’re just here for the week. My mother has business.’

He stared at me with those blue blowtorch eyes. I felt, suddenly, as though I had told him too much – far more than I had intended to – and that an undefined danger lay concealed
beneath his innocent interest. It was only later that I wondered what
his
business was there, at that particular time. But now, as if anticipating this very question, he said carelessly,
‘I’m doing some farm stuff up here. But my car broke down. I’ve been waiting three days for them to repair it. But they have no parts. That’s the future for us, Patrick
– no spare parts.’ He laughed loudly.

I stood up. ‘I’d better go.’

‘I was about to buy you a drink.’

‘Not tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get some sleep.’

‘Just one quick one in the bar.’

‘Maybe tomorrow.’

‘All right. Tomorrow. And tell your mother she’s welcome to join us.’

‘I’ll tell her.’

I hovered for another second, unsure how to leave. He suddenly leaned forward and took hold of my wrist with a strong but soft grip. ‘Listen,’ he said, apparently friendly, ‘I
didn’t mean to offend you just now.’

‘How? When? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Yes, you do. With what I said about... him. The man on television.’

‘Oh, that. I wasn’t offended.’

‘I hope not. I didn’t mean anything bad. I’m not a racist. I just have certain views, I see the world in a particular way. But I’m not a racist. I have no problem with
your mother’s friend, for example. You can invite him for a drink too, no problem.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure he won’t come.’

He let go of my wrist. ‘As long as you understand.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, Patrick Winter. Goodbye.’

In the painful, gory business of ending their marriage, my parents had done a lot of fighting. All the pent-up poisons had come to the surface and burst out. A lot of ugly
things had been said, some of them true. I had lain in bed and heard them going at each other downstairs, night after night. The sound of breaking glass is forever bound up in my mind with the
smashing of more delicate things.

None of this went on now with Godfrey, though this was, in its way, my mother’s most significant relationship since leaving my father. But in the days that followed that loud argument, I
knew that she was shedding it, or him. It was a cold leaving. Like a noble cause she’d taken on too passionately, he had begun to pall in her eyes. She wouldn’t admit it at the time,
but I could see it in the way she spoke to him, in the way she responded when he touched her. He wasn’t an idea any more; he was too real.

Later she told me: ‘It was all the rhetoric that did it. I just couldn’t bear it. It tired me.’

‘You said that was what you loved about him. You said he cared deeply about things.’

‘He’s so young.’

‘You liked that too.’

‘And he was so rough. In bed, you know. I need a little tenderness, I need to be
held
. It was the latent violence,’ she announced, with enormous conviction. ‘It
frightened me.’

I didn’t go on, though I could have. ‘You found that attractive too,’ I could have said. ‘You told me you liked being treated like an object, white men were so tame and
weak... ’

There was no point. She changed her positions the way she changed her clothes, and she didn’t care to remember how she’d felt in the past. At the time I was sorry for Godfrey. I
thought he had no idea of what was coming. Now I think he did know; I think he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being hurt.

The morning after the fight and our drive out to the Moon Landscape, I went into their room. Godfrey was downstairs, having breakfast. My mother, wrapped in a kikoi, was brushing her hair at the
mirror. I sat next to her on the stool, pressed up close as we’d used to sit when I was young. But years had passed, and there was grey now in her hair, and my face wasn’t smooth and
empty any more.

‘Tell me about Godfrey,’ I said.

She hadn’t expected this question. She put the brush down. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Where does he come from?’

‘A little town somewhere north. I forget the name.’

‘When did he come to Windhoek?’

‘A few years ago. He came to study. The academy gave him a scholarship, or he wouldn’t have been able to afford it. His background is very poor, that I do know. His father is dead,
so he brought his mother to the city with him. But you saw how they live.’

‘Why did he do drama?’

‘I don’t know, really. I’ve wondered about that too. I think he meant to do it just as a filler in first year, but then he discovered he liked it.’ She nudged me.
‘All these
questions.
’

‘And his politics? Where does he get it from – his anger... ?’

‘Oh, God, I don’t know. With a background like that, wouldn’t you want to change things... ?’ Something about this disturbed her; she picked up the brush again and began
pulling it through her hair. ‘Patrick, I want to get dressed. I’ll see you downstairs.’

I wasn’t sure myself where these questions were coming from, but I was interested in Godfrey – more interested than I’d been in any of my mother’s other lovers. Maybe
more interested than I’d ever been in my father. When I got downstairs he was already finished breakfast and was heading out the door. ‘Where are you off to?’ I said.

‘For a walk on the beach. Want to come?’

I was hungry, but I went along. The sand was stained blackly with oil, but it was good to be standing at this point where three deserts converged: the land, the ocean, the sky. The noise of the
waves filled up the silence, so that the lack of conversation wasn’t awkward.

After a long pause, he said, ‘I’d better get going. I have a lot to do.’