Embrace (42 page)

‘Darling, the boys are going to sing again, do come in and listen.’ Mrs Olver s voice reached us from the open lounge doors.

Mr Olver stood up, saying he’d like to hear more about Ma’am’s children.

She and I were left alone outside. ‘

‘And you, Karl, what do you think will happen in South Africa?’

This — the enormous question — was not something I’d ever really thought about. I said I hated politics. I said I didn’t really mind Bantu, that I thought it was unfair that they could not vote in South Africa or live where they’d like. Bantu were human beings, but they were not ready to run a country. And then there was the thing that they tended to take away white land. We now owned a house in Amanzimtoti, I said — the first since we got out of Tanzania. I would hate to lose that if the blacks took over.

I asked her about her son, who had just completed matric. She was going to phone home within a day or so to hear about his results — if she could get through on these lines. She was proud that he wasgoing into the army. Of course it was dangerous, but it was service to our country and simply the way things were. I wanted to ask about her ex-husband, why she was divorced, but imagined the question overly familiar or rude. Instead I told her that my cousin James had a British passport, and that meant he would not be required to go into the army like the rest of us when he turned eighteen. ‘Don’t you think it unfair, Ma’am,’ I asked, ‘that people can live in a country and get everything from that country and not have to go to the army because they have foreign passports?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s outrageous.’

‘My cousin James says he refuses to die for a country that isn’t even his.’

‘Well then, why doesn’t he leave and go back to England?’

‘Ireland,’ I said. ‘My Aunt is Irish.’

‘Back to Ireland, then?’

‘That’s exactly what my father says. My’ cousin’s a real sissy, anyway,’ I said. ‘Always doing flower arrangements and he wants to be a florist when he grows up.’ Ma’am said she supposed there was nothing really wrong with that, and we laughed when she said James would probably have a tough time being a florist in the army.

‘And, what about you, Karl? Do you like flowers?’

‘I don’t like flowers in arrangements,’ I said. ‘I love flowers; but in a house I prefer just one flower, like a single rose or even a single bottle-brush or just one twig of bougainvillea in a vase. My cousin makes these arrangements, with green oasis, that are all stiff and formal. Especially protea arrangements; they’re so hard and ugly. I hate those.’

She said she didn’t believe any flower ugly. Did I know proteas were named for the Greek sea god Proteus, who could change his shape to become whatever he wanted to be? I said no, I didn’t know that; and, that I didn’t mean I hated proteas, I hated them in arrangements. I pointed out the wild irises and foxgloves growing behind us. She asked what sort of flower arrangements I liked.

‘At one of our host families, I saw some paintings and photographs of one red disa in a vase. That’s what I’ll have in my house one day. Or in my office on my desk where I work. A single disa in a vase, so that I can look up at it from my work. Or just a handful of irises, like Van Gogh.’

Dominic and Almeida were doing ‘Dos Allerschonste Kindi’.

‘Like angels, those two voices,’ Ma’am murmured. Something about the phrase had an odd or familiar ring.
Like angels, those two voices.
Where was the memory’s origin?

She asked whether I was fond of art. I said yes, I loved painting. Knowing she was the one who taught Standard Six Art and Latin, I left out that the few times I’d been in an art gallery I had found most of the paintings and sculptures devoid of meaning; that amongst every two or three hundred paintings there might be but a single one I liked. I told her that Bok had agreed that I could take Art as a subject in high school as long as I played rugby and did athletics as well. It was rugby and Art or no Art at all. Or, Bok said, I could drop rugby if I won the 1500 metres in track. I told her my favourite painter was Van Gogh, his poplars, and Monet’s waterlilies. She asked whether I knew an artist by the name of George O’Keeffe. I said no, though it does sound familiar. She said she would show me pictures, the following year. I thought of telling her I wasn’t coming back. Kept quiet, not wanting to complicate the moment or ruin the adult conversation. If I were fond of landscape and flowers, Ma’am said, I’d have to see O’Keeffe. Where’s he from? I asked. She, Ma’am said. Georgia O’Keeffe is an American.
The greatest woman painter in the world.
And what about Jan Hendrik Pierneef, and Maggie Laubscher, South Africa’s greatest painters, the ones who drove our national art? Again I wanted to tell her that I was not coming back; that I was going to Port Natal to start high school there; that I would look up the painters in Durban and write to her about my impressions.

She asked what I would like to do when I was a grown-up. Irepeated what I had for years said: I was going to be a lawyer. I now left out the part about writing plays or making films.

She turned to me, slowly, and in the night, I now again hear her voice: ‘You know . . . Do you remember last year, when I heard you do “The Moth and the Flame”?’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I laughed.

‘There was in your rendition something of the sensitivity and sensibility of an actor. It was as though you understood each word of that poem, as though you yourself could have written it. Do you ever think of becoming an actor?’

I said no, I don’t, though I’d been in plays and musicals.

‘You should, Karl,’ she said, in her voice a note of inspiration, but also a shadow of sadness as my name left her tongue. For an instant, I no longer wanted to leave the school. Ma’am, alone, strict, upright, humourless, attractive in a severe way, she — even without Dominic — might be worth returning for.

The following night we sang again for the Olvers. Noticing me once more leaving the ‘Silent Night’ descant to him, Dominic asked that I try second soprano. Keeping my ear close to Almeida’s mouth, I quickly picked up the seconds’ score. I heard my own voice beside and with Steven’s. I sounded bigger and richer than ever before.

In bed Dominic suggested I should get out of firsts. That I should ask next year to be moved to seconds: ‘How come you’ve stayed in firsts so long?’

‘When we do those voice-tests at the beginning of the year, I’ve said both times that I have hay fever. So I’ve never been tested. Besides, I know how to fake the high notes. Look, I just strain these ligaments in my neck, like—’

‘It’s a complete waste, Karl. You can’t even go near a D. You must move. No wonder you hate choir. You’re in the wrong voice.’ Outside was as quiet as inside the house. Being in the wrong voice wascertainly part of it, but there was also the fact that much of the music didn’t appeal to me.

‘Tonight,’ I said, ‘when we sang . . . I could hear my voice has changed. Not just that it’s deeper. It’s not bad, is it, Dominic?’

‘Karl, it’s useless on first soprano. It’s terrific in second. It’s developed, idiot. You don’t sing for two years every day without developing your whole vocal chamber. You should hear recordings of me two years ago; I sound like any average little choir moffie from Pofadder. Okay, not quite that average. Promise me you’ll ask to be transferred, in January? Anyway, if you do the test Cilliers will pick it up. Promise me.’ ‘I promise,’ I said, knowing the promise could not be broken for I was not coming back.

Giggling into my ear, and suddenly changing to Gogga, he said, ‘I wowouloeldid popay a mimiloelloelionee tito boke fickucockykedid boky Cociloelloeliersoos.’

I laughed into the pillow and whispered: ‘Popigog.’ To which he said he couldn’t wait for next year when Cilliers would be our conductor and we’d be Seniors.

Sunlight, filtering through the mosquito net, fell across our sheets. The wind sent waves up the jetty and white horses cavorted miles over the lake. Another night in which we had shared the same bed. Holding hands. At breakfast, Mr Olver said the weather was ideal for the catamaran. Tantalising associations flashed through my mind. Catamarans at full sail were things I had seen only in Seven Seas Cane Spirits advertisements screened in drive-ins and on cinema screens: tropical beaches and turquoise water; men and women in wet bathing suits in colours contrasting with their streamlined bronzed bodies.

Mrs Olver suggested we wear T-shirts over our bathing trunks as some form of protection both against the wind, which was sure to be freezing at high speed, and against sun. Ma’am, afraid of the water, declined to join us. She followed us out onto the jetty, the wind scooping up her thin cotton dress, exposing white muscular legs. She insistedon our wearing life jackets for the duration of the trip. Life jackets, I thought, were no more than devices of physical constraint, designed to inhibit physical mobility. How ridiculous it would look, how it would spoil everything, if the men and women in the Seven Seas commercials had to plod around with life jackets covering their bouncing breasts, their rippling torsos. I resented Ma’am for her interference with my idea of what a catamaran trip should be — for forcing us into inflatable straitjackets; a brief wish that she was not staying with us.

Mr Olver instructed us to sit three on the port fin and three on starboard. At his command, we were to move from side to side as his navigation and the wind dictated. Mrs Olver, readying ropes and slowly unfurling the sails, seemed an able sailor, despite her grey hair and a face creased and lined like a tortoise from too much sun. We drifted from the jetty. The others waved at Ma’am. I, deliberately, looked out into the choppy lake.

Mr Olver steered while his wife hoisted the sails. Wind billowed the enormous white sail and we shrieked as we took off into a southerly wind. Shouts of excitement passed between the two fins, the three of us on port trying to make ourselves audible over the wind, the roar of the sail and the crashing of waves. Mr Olver called for starboard to prepare to move to port; the moment all six of us were seated and clinging to the fin, Mrs Olver swung the sail and suddenly we lifted into the air, howling as the port fin flew over the water two metres above the surface. I was sure we would capsize at any moment. Mrs Olver shouted for us to lean back. I closed my eyes and felt the gush of air as my back hung over the side in mid-air. As she tightened the sail the port fin slowly descended closer to the surface and we exchanged glances, signalled relief with smiles just a little too broad. Mr Olver called three back to starboard and I wondered whether we were in for another lift, but nothing happened and we merely sped along at what seemed a miraculous pace. By then we were hanging back on our own accord, our heads skimming the surface as we chattered and laughed. I looked to the fore and aft: we had completely lostsight of land. There was a moment of unease in which I felt grateful for the secure suction of the life jacket to my ribs and the belt tightened around my waist. Looking into the wind made my eyes water so I closed them, leant back over the side, imagined us on a voyage through space. A few more times we were hoisted into the air, screamed, certain each was an occasion for capsizing, but the greyhaired Olvers, smiling and sticking out playful tongues, brought both fins down and we swished along, getting drenched each time the craft sliced the swells. Soon we could again see land. Mrs Olver, agile as a monkey, began lowering the sail and our speed decreased.

Approaching the jetty, we could see Ma’am, rising from the walkway where she had been sitting with a book. We glided in to the choppy waters and Mrs Olver dropped the fenders over starboard and threw a rope for Ma’am to catch. The old woman leapt from the fin and took the rope from Ma’am. She tied the craft to the jetty posts. Ma’am, wearing dark glasses, said she was relieved that her ‘charges’ had all returned safely. She asked whether we knew we had been away for two hours. Indeed, it had not felt that, more like thirty minutes. Bennie and Dominic told her she had missed out on quite an adventure and she said some voyages were better left to fiction. She said she had called South Africa reverse charges while we were away and, wait for it, she said, smiling, her son Graham had passed matric with five distinctions.” We clapped and Lukas and Bennie whistled through their teeth. As I disembarked I looked at Ma’am. I was struck by the way she wipes from her face strands of hair that have come loose from the ponytail in her neck. Beneath her one arm she clutches the book and with the other she tries to hold down the flapping cotton dress. The wind seems to glue her dress to her breasts and between her thighs lies the definition of a perfect V I found her beautiful — severely beautiful — and into my mind settled a picture of her that remains as vivid as almost any of her the following year, in front of the blackboard or scowling with displeasure at some inanity that I or one of the others had committed in class. Then, while she’s lookingdown on the catamaran, Steven Almeida, with his dark hair wet and the black T-shirt sticking to his torso, walks quietly by her. The two of them smile at each other. And that, too, I remember, as if it all happened in slow motion.

Passing her on the jetty I asked after what she was reading. She held the book up, cautioning me not to touch it with my wet hands, as it was from the Olvers’ shelves. It was called
A Streetcar Named Desire.

‘Is it good, Ma’am?’

‘It’s a fine piece of writing. You should read it.’

‘I will, Ma’am,’ I said. I’d never heard of Tennessee Williams. The afternoon before we left Malawi I picked up the book from where Ma’am had left it, face down beside her G & T. It was only then that I saw it was a play. Other than
Pygmalion,
which I’d found and read after seeing
My Fair Lady,
I’d never read plays. Yet, even without having read one, without thinking plays — other than Shakespeare’s whose I had not read — were much published in books, I had wanted to be a playwright. Till Dr Taylor. Fuck him. I thought then. I’ll find
A Streetcar Named Desiree
in Toti’s library and read it right under Bok’s nose.