Embrace (36 page)

Bokkie sat on the edge of their bed with Bok’s arms around her. Both crying. Bok noticed me and motioned me closer.

‘Dademan died this afternoon.’ A simple statement through my father’s tears. I had never seen him cry like this.

Then, I see myself, throwing my head back, screaming; Bok and Bokkie, holding onto me as I wail, no, no, and were all weeping, all three of us, them clasping me to them. I break from their arms and jump up and down. How, what happened? Bokkie says Dad has gone to a better place, that we must use that knowledge to console ourselves. At once, as quickly as I had started crying, I stop.

Dademan had gone to Addington Hospital for blood-pressure tests; nothing major, we had been told. Then, so Bok said, while he was still in hospital a blood clot had passed through his heart. Mumdeman had been with him, staying with Uncle Michael and Aunt Siobhain while he was in hospital. The funeral in Durban would take place in three days’ time. We’d be going.

I went outside to wait for Lena and Bernice. Bok said I shouldn’t tell them; he would. Simba came running, waving his tail and I sat on the kitchen step and told the dog that Dademan was dead. Dead, I said, Dademan will go to heaven. Maybe it’s adjacent to doggy heaven and Dademan would see Chaka and Suz. As I spoke, I began crying again, now as much about Dademan as about Chaka and Suz; about Jim and Nkosasaan and Boy whom I would never see again. Death was like saying goodbye: terrible, terrible, terrible. Death was something I had grown up with, seeing it every day in the jaws of lion, the arrow of a cheetah’s speed felling a warthog or impala, vultures clustered on a rhino killed by poachers, the swoop of a fish eagle to clutch its food from the water, hyena laughing like cannibals over their rotten fest. Death, I knew, was part of the cycle of life. I thought I knew it, understood it, when Chaka and Suz had been put down in Umfolozi, as merely the way it was meant to be; no place for sentiment in the bush, Bok said, and I understood, agreed. But this was not the bush; this was not animals feeding to nourish themselves or dogs put to sleep for killing an antelope. This was Dad — Dademan. The man who told me stories of hunting and of the war. Who shot cines of us kids whenever he could. Who let me play with the radio at Charters Creek. Who was meant to come across the estuary on
Piper
and let me and Lena steer it back to their little jetty at high tide. And what about poor Mumdeman? Poor, poor Mumdeman. Born in an ox-wagon in Mozambique, working so hard, side by side with Dad to clear the land in Tanganyika, I suddenly wept tears for everything that had died around me during the years in Mkuzi and Umfolozi. I wanted to go back to Umfolozi, or better -still, back to Mkuzi, where there was less death and less goodbye. Then I remembered the little warthogs, Lossie, bitten by a mamba, the horse Vonk shot after he broke his leg, and I didn’t want to go back there either. Back to Tanzania, that’s where I wanted to go; back to where I had been ababy and Dademan said I still had wings: there, where I was an angel in a land that was paradise. Before memory.

We got off school for two days and drove to Durban. Bok and Bokkie spoke about Dademan being buried in the Presbyterian church even though we were Dutch Reformed. Bokkie said it was a fine idea as a compromise between Aunt Siobhain’s Catholicism and our Protestantism. Bokkie said that Aunt Siobhain had written recently anyway to say she was considering leaving the Catholic Church because of its formality and stiff outdatedness. Uncle Michael never went to church, in any case. Aunt Siobhain said maybe by changing to Presbyterian she could get him out of the clubhouse and into church. Now would be a good time, Bokkie said, now that our hard-headed hard-drinking uncle was so vulnerable after Dademan’s death. We said nothing about the fact that neither of our parents ever set foot in the Matubatuba church. One of them would drive us there and sit reading the paper, waiting while we were in Sunday school.

A church is a church, Bok said. But Dademan would none the less be relieved to know he wasn’t being buried from a cathedral with golden idols and crosses and the adornments of the rich. I asked whether it was true that Catholics stuck big safety pins through their tongues and chanted mantras to Satan while they burnt incense and walked down the aisle. Bokkie turned from the front seat and asked where I had come across such rubbish. I said I’d heard it from Sam Pierce. Bokkie said there you have it, allow the kids to mix with Makoppolanders and you get this sort of idiocy implanted in their brains. And what’s more, she said, this business of boys going into girls’ rooms had to stop. We were getting too old for that kind of mixing. Lena should probably also move in with Bernice. When we get back to St Lucia, Bokkie said, that’s the end of hanging around the Pierces’ trailer.

Bernice said Dademan was being kept in a morgue — a new word — a huge fridge where bodies lay frozen and blue. It sounded morbid,scary, perversely fascinating. I imagined a morgue to be quiet, like when one’s head is under water. Like Bokkie’s left ear. A place one wanted to be and didn’t want to be all at the same time.

In Durban I got my first pair of long trousers with a zipper. To the funeral I wore the new check trousers with my black Bata school shoes and Bernice wore an old dress of Stephanie’s and Lena one of Bernice’s that had first been Stephanie’s. Bokkie had to buy a black dress and a hat and Bok wore the black suit in which he and Bokkie were married. At the funeral everyone wept. It was horrible, seeing Uncle Michael and Bok, holding on to each other. It was ugly, ugly, seeing men cry. And Aunt Siobhain, and Stephanie and James. And Mumdeman, now so much smaller than I had remembered her from a mere two weeks before, clinging onto Sanna Koerant. I never again wanted to see an old woman cry but everyone said it was healthy that Mumdeman had not held back. Mumdeman didn’t want Dademan’s coffin in the church because it would distract our attention from the service and the minister’s sermon, which was, after all, the important thing. So the first time we saw the coffin was when we came out of church and set off behind the hearse. All the cars had their lights on.

Brandy and Coke and cigarettes; no sentiment in that; can smell him even now; as I type. Mumdeman sat on a fold-out chair at the open grave while the minister gave another sermon. Bok, Uncle Michael, Oom GerrieTheron and others from East Africa carried the coffin to the grave. They let it sink with a hydraulic lift. Before they started throwing in the soil, baskets of red rose petals circulated and we all walked around the grave, scattering petals. I tried to think of Dademan inside the wooden coffin. The nose, the De Man nose, the wrinkles and blond-grey hair — my hair — the busy, naughty blue eyes, my eyes, Bok’s eyes. Were they closed or open? And what if he wasn’t dead? Sam Pierce had told me a story of a woman who was buried alive. They dug her up and found scratch marks on the inside of the coffin. But Bok said that was rubbish; that we just had to accept that Dad was dead. Bokkie said that cremation was the newthing. This burying of people was a waste of valuable land; before you know it the entire surface of the earth will be nothing but row upon row of graves. Mumdeman had a plot beside Dademan. I didn’t want to think about it; not Mumdeman, please let me die before anyone else in my family.

Driving back to St Lucia, Bernice told us that her friend Mona said death comes in threes. We should look out; be careful and warn the family. Bokkie told her we were Christians who didn’t subscribe to that sort of superstitious belief. That was the property of the heathen who’d eat their words in hell.

Months later the Parks Board transferred Mumdeman to Midmar Dam. We all went over to Charters to help pack. And then, after Mumdeman’s stuff had gone off to Midmar, Bok and Phinias carried the cines and slides and my trophies to the Land Rover. The mounted sable, Grants gazelle and dick-dick heads; the slides and cines, everything Dademan had left me in his will. All to our garage in St Lucia and later to storage when we moved to Toti and then finally into Bok’s garage office in Bowen Street.

The lead pipes, covered in their orange cloth, lay hidden behind the shoes at the bottom of the locker in my new dorm.

The five of us had been divided into separate dorms. After eighteen months together in E, they had split us up. Lukas was in G, about six beds away from Mervyn. Bennie and I were in F, nine beds between us. As soon as Dominic got back — Uncle Charlie responded to my query — he would go to the furthest end of G. It all took a few days to sink in. At first I felt only the deep loss, the loneliness, brought on by being removed from my friends. Coming back from that holiday Aunt Siobhain had come along with Bok and Bokkie to see the grand school I attended. When reception told us to take mythings up to F, I already suspected what had happened. Uncle Charlie, welcoming parents at the desk, said that from now Juniors would occupy the school’s small dormitories and no Seniors or Secondaries would reside outside of the massive C, F and G. I unpacked things into the new locker with Bokkie. Bok showed Aunt Siobhain around the building and gardens. There was no sign of Lukas, Mervyn or Steven Almeida. I saw Bennie’s name on the bed, down the aisle from me.

As they were about to drive off, I asked to sit with them for just a few minutes in the Chevrolet. The moment I was on the back seat I burst into tears and said I didn’t want to stay there. I begged them to take me home. Aunt Siobhain put her arms around me. Bokkie, turning around from the front seat to face me, looked perplexed. She said nothing. Bok shook his head and exhaled irritably. He said I was merely distraught at saying goodbye after such a wonderful holiday at home. I said I didn’t want to stay there if I couldn’t be in a dorm with Dominic and the others. Bok said I would get used to it; make new friends. I said I didn’t want new friends, I had friends and I didn’t want to be split from them. Then Bok asked whether I hadn’t learnt anything from Dr Taylor? Had Dr Taylor not taught me that happiness was in my own hands? He said I was twelve and a half, I would soon be a teenager, a young man. He said when I turned thirteen in October I would get my first watch; I could have a new, modern, digital watch, they’d bring up for Parents’ Weekend. I knew I’d lost; knew I was doomed for at least another six months. I dried my tears, kissed them, and got out of the car. I waved as they drove off. Hating them. Needing them.

At night, after everyone was asleep, I took the weights from the bottom of my locker. For half an hour — until I lay drenched and panting in damp sheets — I built my muscles. The days passed and the heaviness that hung shadows over me night and day refused to lift. The blues, bigger, deeper than they had ever come to me before. Dominic was not due back for another two weeks. And anyway, whatwas I going to say when he returned? How to tell him that I could no longer be his friend? Better that their plane crash into the sea on the way back from Europe.

I sought a place to be alone, away from everyone. Till then it had not dawned on me that one could be alone in that hateful place where people were everywhere. I need privacy, I thought, and felt wise at such a sophisticated word intruding into my thoughts. Now I discovered the solitude of the library, and with that came many recollections of the library near the Toti station. Initially I thought I would be chased off the walkway. But I was ignored. It became my place. I discovered the encyclopaedias and began my journey from A towards Z.

Nights in the vast impersonality of F dorm threatened to smother me. Sleep eluded me even more than before. Try as I did, the dream of flying refused to work its magic. Mornings left me exhausted and blue. During breaks I sat alone on the rock below the schools signpost. I wondered whether the sadness was the function of losing my mind. Perhaps the mad gene had somehow been activated. Aunt Lena’s had started when she was sixteen and Uncle Klaas’s only when he was already a professor. Perhaps it struck earlier with each passing generation. If I fathered a child maybe it would be mad already at birth.

There was nothing intimate about F. We looked down on the quad. Cathkin and Champagne Castle were nowhere in sight. While Bennie was only nine beds away, having him close to me meant nothing. Almeida, still in C, no longer attracted me. His aloofness was not sexy or mysterious. He was just the same as me, I thought, withdrawn and sad and miserable. Not mysterious. Certain friends, I saw, meant something only amongst others. I tried to stay out of Mervy’s way. I went riding, for there Lukas and I could bond, but even that was nowhere near the same as the eighteen months before our June Walpurgis.

Sometimes it felt as though I hated them all.

Alone they were almost strangers.

The world had turned its back on me and I wanted to do the same to the world. I yearned to be at home. Not with my parents or my sisters, but not here, and not here left me with only one option: home. I went with Mervyn to get extra pocket money. The accountant told me no provision had been made and what’s more, Bok had not paid my school fees for last term. The bookkeeper’s words struck me like a blow and I stepped back from the window, aware that Mervy had heard. He asked her for another two rand and tried to give it to me. I refused. Why did she have to tell me that? School fees were not my responsibility; and why in front of the others? How angry I was with Bok. How I loathed my father, resented him for the shame he was causing me by keeping me there when clearly we could not afford it. And then dragging me to Dr Taylor, which, I knew, cost money: had I not seen the fucking enormous check? Was my handwriting not now also slanted to the right? Why didn’t Bok pay my school accounts rather than cart me to expensive educational specialists? I could already feel the shame of being asked to leave the school.

I missed Dominic, longed for his return almost as much as I dreaded having him there. At night, unable to fall asleep, I practised with the weights.

One afternoon, as I made my way to the library — my new refuge — Mr Mathison passed me on the passage and asked me to come to his office. I had no idea what he wanted from me and at once was certain that it had to do with the unpaid account. For the first time since June I re-entered his office. He said that he’d been keeping an eye on me and that he wanted to entrust me with a centrally important task. A slight thrill. Mathison adjusted his glasses. Pushing them with the tip of his forefinger up his nose. Then he flattened his blue wool blazer across his chest and smiled at me. Would I, he asked, keep my eyes and ears open and come and report to him if I ever heard anything similar to ‘the business’ of last term.