Embrace (33 page)

‘Karl. Get back to work.’

‘Why can’t I watch, Miss? It’s not like I’ve never seen it. You should see rhinos, Miss, it’s like a duststorm when they do it...’

‘They’re just mating, as you yourself said. Why do you want to watch it?’

‘Because it’s beautiful. And anyway, I’ve done it. In the bush with sheep.’

For an instant, as her smile seemed to disappear, I thought I’d gone too far. Then she smiled again and said: ‘You have not!’

‘I have. And guys do it in the dorms all the time.’

‘What do they do?’

‘We . . . they,’ now that it had been mentioned, a shadow of doubt settled in my mind. I glanced at Almeida. My erection was suddenly gone. I shouldn’t go on. Saying anything had been a mistake. I could see it in her face: even as she smiled. She was too keen, wanted too much to know.

‘Karl, tell me.’ Her demeanour had changed. She was still trying to be her old jovial self, but the smile was no longer genuine: ‘In E Dorm? The five of you?’

‘No, Miss! I was only joking, Miss. To see your reaction.’

‘Karl, come to the desk.’ Her smile had vanished.

‘He’s only joking, Miss Roos,’ Steven said.

‘Don’t lie to me, you two. I know what you boys get up to. This is very, very serious. What is it you — they — do? Tell me.’

I went to the front of the class, trying to laugh it off: ‘Miss, it’s just fun. They just...’ But I couldn’t say another word. Whatever we had done had to be kept a secret. Why, why had I not kept my big mouth shut! And after all, it was nothing. It was too small to even mention and all at once too big as well. She persisted. To show her how silly her seriousness was, to hide my own embarrassment, I thought itwould be less grave if I drew it on the blackboard: the surface cold against my hand, the chalk screeching, little stick men, like Bushmen paintings, figures just rubbing against each other. Her neck turned to watch the pictures appear beneath my hand.

‘Steven. Do you do this?’

Almeida shook his head.

‘Karl?’

‘No, Miss. But it’s just playing, Miss Roos.’

‘Who have you seen doing this?’

‘No one, Miss. It’s just a story that goes around.’

‘Names, Karl. Give me names.’

‘It’s just boys, Miss Roos. Stories, from before our time.’

‘Okay. You can go back to your seat.’

I erased the drawings from the blackboard. Blew the chalk dust from my fingers as I moved back to my seat. Steven and I stared at each other. What had I done? What was she going to do with the information? Neither Steven nor I had mentioned names. Surely, she would leave it alone. No use in being paranoid; no, not Roos; she had simply been inquisitive; had such a good sense of humour. Surely, surely, she would not say a word? I tried to deflect her attention by asking why we called it a blackboard when in truth it was green. By force of habit, Karl, as easy as that, now get back to your lines, she said. What was Steven thinking? Would he tell the others? Not Steven, surely he knew it had been accidental, not deliberate? We completed our lines about coloured flies and I went out into the drizzle that had started, down to the stables to tell Lukas that King had covered Cassandra. In eleven months’ time there would be a foal. So, that’s in May next year, I figured; and what a stunning horse would spring from King and Cassandra’s genes. I thought of Steven’s face as he’d looked when I left Miss Roos’s classroom: a black polo-neck jersey folded high beneath his chin. Cheeks flushed red. Curly black hair cropped short. His green-brown eyes seemed not to want to look at me.

In the auditorium, where on the choir benches we stood facing Mr Roelofse in the early evening before dinner, I saw her as she waddled through, smiling. One of the maids pointed her down the passage towards Mathison’s office. Miss Roos, hips asway, smiling as was her good-natured habit, glided off to seal our fate. Later, that night, after lights-out, while Mervyn wept quiedy into his pillow, when we were all too afraid to speak, I would recall her, try not to imagine the conversation she and Mathison must have had behind that closed door.

Hoerskool Port Natal

Umbilo, Durban

5 August 1976

Dear Karl

It’s Friday afternoon last period and I’m sitting in the music room at Port Natal and writing instead of practising. So, excuse the foolscap paper! How are you? I am fine.

The rest of the school is on the rugby field doing cadets. It’s rather ridiculous, they’ve told us the gtrb are soon also to start doing cadets. I suppose it can be fun and Lem most certainly loves the idea. It’s still not clear whether the girls will have to wear brown uniforms like the boys. Lena can’t wait, wants to be a drill sergeant. On the train in the morning she teaches me how to do an about turn and salute. I love your sister. She’s the talk of the school at the moment because she’s so young and in the first netball team. And the boys love her because of her beautiful legs. You both got your mother’s peifect legs. Your legs are going to be like Shaun Thompson’s. We saw him surfing the other day.

Only three months to go before you perform the Mass. I’m aghast that they’re letting you do it, it is after all the most difficult thing Beethoven ever wrote. It’s an hour long; I’ve been listening to it on record and can see them drilling you all to get it committed to memory — or are you allowed sheet music. Is it tough?

Have you decided whether you’re coming to Port Natal next year or are you staying there? Lena says you’ll he coming hack and I do hope you do. Lena says Bok is saying something about you people moving into Durban, to get closer to his office if he goes into insurance. Have you heard? That will be great
,
because we’re moving into town to get closer to Dad’s work at Durban-Westville. You know he left Durban varsity to go there, because begot a full professorship there?

Teaching the little coolies who are always making trouble. Working as hard as ever.

My mother is fine, still teaching music at Kuswag. My mother wants to know if your voice has dropped or if it’s breaking? She still reckons you were her greatest discovery. We haven’t seen you in ages. In April. Almost four months. Are you coming home in October for the holidays or are you going on tour? I miss you, man!

Thank you for the postcards from Oudtshoorn and from Table Mountain. I hope you thought of me while you were up there. I want to live in the Cape when I grow up. Maybe I’ll go to Stellenbosch to study medicine. I got straight As in July and I’ve got to keep it up because some of the medical schools now demand to see grades as far back as Std 8. More and more people wanting to study, I suppose. We’re having bomb drills now and that means we can stand out on the rugby field missing entire periods when we should be studying.

Okay, there goes the bell. I must meet Lena at the gate so we can go to Umbilo to catch the train. Weekend! I’ll post the letter tomorrow.

I love you

Alette

xxxxxxx

Dishing up our food, Beauty whispered that I was to go and look under my pillow. After lunch, instead of going to the encyclopaedias, I rushed to my bed. Below the pillow I found a dirty slip of yellow matchbox cardboard. With the slip enclosed in my hand I cut quickly through C Dorm and went into the library. Downstairs the teachers were still eating. I sat up close to the shelves where I’d be inconspicuous. I took down a book. The scrap of cardboard was adorned with a few sentences in the most exquisite handwriting I’d ever seen:

Karl, Come to the plum-orchard any afternoon around four when the hoys are down at the rugby field. I’ve come to visit.

Klasie.

Grinning, I slipped the note into my shorts. Was someone playing a trick on me? Who was Klasie? Jacques? I didn’t know his handwriting. And then, if it were him, how had Beauty known about the note? No, it could not be Jacques, he wouldn’t have given it to or even told Beauty; he would have gone and put it there himself. And why the dirty slip of Lion matchbox. Dom? Him and Beauty in cohorts. He is her favourite. Yes, maybe . . . I took it from my pocket to reread. Like calligraphy, each letter upright, curly, each linked to the next, the capital letters exactly the same height, the y’s perfect, almost as if the letters were printed by machine. Or by the surest hand in the world. And the name, Klasie, signed flamboyantly. Like Van Gogh. A name that could be signed at the bottom of a painting. Where had Dominic learnt to write like that?

There was no question of my ignoring the note. Who ever’s hand had made the beautiful script knew that my curiosity was bound to get the better of me. Or did the sender mistakenly think I might know who he was? It had to be someone playing the fool. A grownup. It was grown-up handwriting.

I didn’t go riding with Lukas. Instead I took
Gone With the Wind
and strolled down to the fort with Bennie and Mervyn while Dominic stayed to practise. I told them about Scarlett O’Hara and the American Civil War. As we entered the fort Bennie said he smelt fire. And kaffir. Look, clearly someone had made a fire near the back. We swept out dead coals and ashes. Mervyn guessed it was probably one of the farm kaffirs who came down to have a romantic camp-firefuck. Bennie said we should report it to Mr Mathison. The blacks aren’t allowed down here in our forts! We decided against reporting; didn’t want teachers snooping around our sanctuary.

The ashes didn’t interest me. While Bennie and Mervyn spoke, my thoughts were elsewhere. Could it have been Dom, who would sneak down from the conservatory so that we could have a quick toss in the orchards? No; we had done it the night before. And why in the middle of the orchard when there were no leaves to hide us? I looked up, through the greening poplars, across at the orchards bathed in huge brush strokes of white and pink. And why not in the orange grove, where we did it in summer? Attention still on the mysterious note, but trying to hide my preoccupation, I told Bennie and Mervyn that Lukas and I were angry at Mr Walshe for refusing to let us name Cassandra’s four-month-old foal. We wanted to call it Sea Cottage for a horse that had been shot at the Durban July Handicap. Mr Walshe felt it was an unoriginal name and the associations with a wounded horse no good. What about Little Prince, I suggested to Mr Walshe, theres a wonderful book . . . But Mr Walshe said the little stallion was only going to be little for a while. What about calling Cassandra and King’s foal Dragon’s Prince? Mountain for the Berg, Prince to show he was heir to the King.

Gone With the Wind
 — the thickest book I’d ever read — in hand, I drifted from the fort, saying to Bennie and Mervy I was off to read for a while on Second Rugby Field. Across the deserted field I cut into the bottom of the orchard, then doubled back through the blooming fruit trees as bees and insects zoomed around in the late afternoon sun. How am I to know for sure which are the plum trees? There were a few sections of plum, I knew from summer when the trees were covered in fruit, but now it was just the pink, white and purple of blossoms. Down the overgrown rows I strolled, darting eyes: will it be Dominic, or Jacques? Higher, closer to school.

The little woollen cap stuck up above the kakibos amongst theflowering trees. Back turned to me. It may be a farmhand. But the shoulders were not covered in the uniform of the labourers: no blue overall. The head turned. Then, smiling, he rose. My heart leapt into my throat. No! No, no, no! What is
he
doing here? The scraggly beard, the long filthy hair sticking out in stringy oily strands from beneath the cap. The yellow smile, the missing tooth.

More than a year had passed since I’d seen him in the Bowen Street garden; no, on Toti’s main street! My eyes flew over Groot-Oom Klaas. Klasie. Klasie. Klasie. Oupa Liebenbergs name for him. The man before me cast a glance at the footpath in the distance. Then he stepped in amongst the branches, most of him hidden amongst the blossoms. His grin spread. What is he doing
here
? He must go, at once. I’ll turn around and run. I felt powerless. It was like a nightmare. Here! Of all places. Bad enough when he showed up at home; but here! I stepped to the furthest reach of the branches.

He moved towards me and I froze.

‘Hello, Karl’tjie.’

‘Hello, Groot-Oom Klaas?’

‘I thought I’d come and surprise you. Halfway house between Durban and Jo’burg. A perfect stopover. Respite from the rigours of the road.’

‘How did you know where to find me, Uncle Klaas?’

He chuckled, a ghastly wet smoker’s sound: ‘I always know where you are. Don’t you remember last year, I saw you in Amanzimtoti — where the waters are sweet? Instead of going on from Estcourt direct to Johannesburg, took a side road. Didn’t get any lifts, mind you. Walked all the way from the main road to here. Three days and three nights.’

‘Uncle Klaas . . . I’m going to get into trouble. Anyone could pass by, down the footpath and see me,’ I whispered, motioning with my eyes to the path two hundred yards away. ‘Were not allowed in the orchards. This place is very strict.’ I lifted the book to my chest.

He stepped back into the wrapping of branches and pink blooms; into the centre of the row of trees. A phantom in a haze of pink blossoms.

‘No one can see me.’

‘Uncle Klaas . . .’ I began, wanting only to tell him to leave, but could not. A minute part of me felt pity or something humane. And, the proddings of intrigue. Where was he staying? And how did he get to Beauty? This could be an adventure, but no, it was not one I wanted! No, no, he had to leave. This could ruin everything. Suddenly my recent happiness seemed strung in a precarious equilibrium, about to be snapped. Into chaos. Not only was it too dangerous.

It was shameful.

He was mad, sick, disgusting, dirty. He was shameful but felt no shame. Shame by association. That was the problem.

‘Where are you . . . staying, Uncle Klaas?’