Embrace (61 page)

Uncle Klaas hands the matches to the Silent One. Soon he is inhaling, leans forward and passes the smoking brown zol to Uncle Klaas. My great-uncle hands me the Bushmen tool and silently drags at the zol, its head going red, bits of ash fluttering down to his lap. That these two have not burnt down our fort is a wonder. Who, I speculate silendy, would get the blame if this place went up in flames? Uncle Klaas holds the zol out towards me; as usual I shake my head. He has continued to offer it to me, even though I have told him more than once that the shortest route to expulsion from the school is through smoking.

‘Don’t you think you’ll be expelled as it is — for being out here at night?’

‘I’ll say I felt sorry for you,’ I answered. ‘At worst I’ll get caned.’ And suddenly a thought had struck me and I had wanted to say that I could do as I pleased. Because Jacques would protect me. But of course, I didn’t. In the months I’d been going to him, and especially after the Cape tour, I had occasionally wondered what benefits might befall me from being the choir master’s boy. But nothing had happened to set me apart from my peers. Yet, I had become aware that even if I were not getting tangibles, there was the privilege of the weekend at Paternoster, the privilege of going to Maritzburg with him, oh, and one silly ice-cream cone and something else to lick on! And the privilege of sharing our secret. The privilege lay in the security, I thought. That I can feel safe and happy because of Jacques.

A thrill of horror had run through me as I watched Uncle Klaas and the Silent One smoke dagga the first time. This was crime committed before my eyes. The Silent One getting a glazed look in his eyes, Uncle Klaas becoming more and more animated. How aware I was of the sinful and illegal nature of what they were doing, but to use the words sin or law in Uncle Klaas’s presence seemed not only a waste of breath, but a certain way to activate his scorn. In Geestelike Weerbaarheid classes we had been shown scores of movies on the effects of drug use. One scene from these: hippies in America, walking down streets, shouting like hooligans: Make Marijuana Legal! Make Marijuana Legal. Since Kuswag’s Sunday school days I had been told that drugs opened the portals of hell. And here, too, often during Friday night visits by Dominee Steytler or Minister Shaer, we were read to from little religious tracts that cautioned against smoking, drugs, sex and rock music. Until Malawi I had collected these, saved them in the back of my Bible, read and reread them: The Sin of Smoking; The Sin of Sex; The Sin of Premarital Sex; The Sin of Drugs; The Sin of Jealousy; The Meaning of Revelation. And Dominic shook his head and rolled his eyes. Now the leaflets remained there, ignored. I read rather Song of Songs, Psalms, Proverbs, which I found poetic and often inspirational. A hundred times I had thought of bringing the tracts down here for Uncle Klaas to read, and each time something told me he would laugh in my face, that the codes we were taught to adhere to would be derided and ridiculed in his terrible world. Uncle Klaas was beyond salvation. And who am I, I asked myself, to speak of sin? As much as I cared for Dominic and Jacques, I knew what we were doing was wrong, that as sure as my name was Karl De Man I was going to burn in hell for doing it, for loving them. Dominic didn’t believe in heaven and hell and I’d never touched on it with Jacques. The longer I was with Jacques and Dominic, the more frequent became the moments I doubted, the less I cared that God would send me to hell for this; and, it’s just for now, I told myself over and over, when I leave here, there’s Alette, whom I really love. Surely the fact that I believe in God the father, his son Jesus and the Holy Ghost, that I try to obey the Ten Commandments, surely that will make him forgive me if I were to suddenly die in my sleep? The Ten Commandments says nothing about lying with a man as one does with a woman, even though Mathison had read those passages the previous year from somewhere in the Bible. But, those are just a few little passages, and is what we are doing hurting anyone? It was not a commandment. As Dom says about loving your neighbour as yourself: ‘If God was real, very few white people in this country would see the inside of heaven.’ So, if I burnt in hell, I’d at least be surrounded there by everyone I knew. Barring Dom and the rest of the Websters, but Dom would be there for this other thing anyway and his parents probably because they’re atheists.

‘What’s your interest in this thing?’ Uncle Klaas asks, bringing me back to the present.

‘I’m interested in the Bushmen,’ I answer. ‘Do you know that there are hundreds of Bushmen paintings in these mountains? I even read today there are some in Umfolozi, though I never knew that.’

‘Are you certain this is a Bushmen piece?’

‘Who else’s can it be? I’m looking it up in books at the moment.’

‘Are you not afraid of the Bushmen spirits?’ he says, smiling, his teeth yellow but in a perfect row.

‘Christians don’t believe in ghosts, Uncle Klaas, and neither do you.’

‘Oh, but I do. Spirits, not ghosts. Especially the spirits of the murdered. They are everywhere because they have not been laid to rest.’ I wonder whether it is the mad gene or the dagga talking.

‘Aag, Oom Klaas, that’s an old wives’ tale and you know it.’

. ‘Do I? No, Karl’tjie, these mountains of the dragon are alive with spirits. You should beware walking around at night all on your own.’

‘I’ve never been scared of the dark.’

‘Know what genocide is?’ I shake my head. He starts telling me of how the Zulus under Chaka and later the Boers under Retief exterminated the Bushmen like vermin.

‘But, Uncle Klaas, that’s because they were slaughtering the Boer oxen.’

‘Which were grazing on their hunting grounds.’

‘Well, I’m sorry that happened, Uncle Klaas, but it’s got nothing to do with me.’

‘But you go around carrying a Bushmen implement? You tell me you’re interested in their paintings? Or are you interested in the paintings only because their creators are gone, dead. Because they pose no threat to you?’

‘I find them beautiful. The simplicity appeals to me.’

‘The people or the work?’

‘What?’

‘What do you find beautiful and simple — the people or their work?’ ‘The work, of course, Uncle Klaas.’

‘Precisely, how much simpler the art is if you don’t have to deal with the people who created them.’

‘I’ve started reading about them, so I am dealing with them.’

He laughs and says I’m not half as bright as he expected.

‘Well, why don’t you leave, then!’ I’m suddenly furious. ‘Why did you send me the note then, in the first place!’

‘You came to me, I only told you I was here and invited you for a meeting. I merely said we needed another blanket. I did not force you here, did I, Karl’tjie?’

‘I didn’t ask you to tell me you were here. I could get into deep trouble for being here.’

He ignores me.

‘Are you a Christian, Uncle Klaas?’

‘You speak like a child whenever it suits you, Karl. Listen to yourself?

‘And you like a madman when it suits you. Do you think I don’t ‘ know that you’re mad! How you went to the boarding school in Brei where Bokkie and Uncle Gert were, and how like a madman you stood outside shouting, “Katie and Gert Liebenberg, I’m looking for you.”’

He laughs from his stomach, shows no sign that I have wounded him, instead he says: ‘Oh, yes! That little school at Brei, so your mother remembers! The school consisted of only one classroom. It was easy to know where they were!’

‘Didn’t it ever cross your mind that you were an embarrassment to my mother?’

‘A madman and an embarrassment. Mmmm . . . so that’s what the family says about me. Tell me in which classroom you are and I’ll come calling. Make certain history repeats itself...’ he says, laughing, the folds of his filthy jersey undulating against his chest.

‘You’re joking, aren’t you, Uncle Klaas?’

‘Only if you want me to be.’

Suddenly I am terrified that he will show up at the school. Already I hear his voice: ‘Karl De Man, ek soek jou!’ And the eyes of everyone darting towards the horrendous source of the voice standing on the quad’s lawn. Instantly I alter my tone, change the subject.

‘Do you like choir music, Uncle Klaas?’

‘We can hear you people, right down by the ford in the mornings and afternoons.’

‘Were rehearsing Beethoven’s
Missa Solemnis.
It’s to perform in Europe and for Prime Minister John Vorster in December,’ I say. ‘The concert will be broadcast live on TV.’

‘They still start you early,’ he says, gazing into the fire, nodding his head.

‘Do you know the
Missa Solemnis,
Uncle Klaas?’

Again he nods and for a moment I see a shadow pass over his gaze. It is the first time I am aware of feeling any sadness for him, on his behalf. Sadness is different from pity. I don’t know how, but it must be. Could it be that he had been a music lover before he went mad and that he is now recalling a time when he was a professor in Potchefstroom? There is so much I want to know about this man. I am fascinated by him as much as I fear him. He yawns and says it’s time for them to get back to sleep, else they’ll oversleep and I wouldn’t want anyone to find my embarrassment of a madman uncle sleeping in my fort, would I?

‘I am not embarrassed,’ I answer and look quickly at the Silent One, who has already started making himself comfortable. Like an old mangy dog. In my blanket. Even if he doesn’t understand a word of Afrikaans, he too must know that I’m lying. As I stand to go, I say that were doing a Wednesday-night concert in the auditorium. They could stand in the orchard beneath the building. ‘You’ll be able to hear well from there.’

Uncle Klaas smiles.

‘And,’ I say, turning to go, ‘we even do some black songs that he’ll like.’

Behind me I hear Uncle Klaas scratching together sand with which he’ll extinguish the fire.

Almost ten. At the front door dressed in school uniform with suitcase in one hand and lunchbox in the other. About to open the bottom door to catch up with his sister already at the end of the asbestos driveway. Heard his mother’s voice in her and the father’s bedroom. She slammed the door of her closet. Father had just returned from a trip. Boy knew why the mother was angry and thought of quickly slipping from the door so they’d think he had already gone. But he wanted to push them, to test their limits, see how far it was to the brink. Then his father called his name and came walking down the passage; caught the boy as he pretended to try and slip from the house. The father walked to within a few paces from the boy and stood shaking his head from side to side. Inside, the boy felt the excitement of fear and the anticipation of humiliation and possible pain. Caught a whiff of Old Spice. The father looked at the boy with loathing, with hatred, his blue eyes icy, ragingly calm. He spoke softly and when the boy looked provocatively down at his shoes he shouted at him to look him in the eye like a man. He asked the boy why he did this. The boy refused to answer. The boy wished the father would die, but only after he had been beaten and shamed. The man said: ‘If you ever even think of doing it again, or if I or your mother ever even suspect you of doing it again, I will kill you.’ Then he turned around. Pleasure spread across the boy’s face as he heard the man walk away down the passage. The boy could not see because through his smile the tears blurred the driveway from which his sister had long disappeared.

Head resting on one elbow, Ma’am marked our essays while we completed a History test on the French Revolution. Political causes. Social causes. Religious causes. Intellectual causes.

Political:
1.&bnsp;The government of the old order was ineffectual. 2.&bnsp;The monarchs were corrupt. 3.&bnsp;The nation was excluded from government. 4.&bnsp;The masses had heard about the examples of England and the American Revolutions. 5.&bnsp;There was too much administrative unwieldiness.
Social:
1.&bnsp;Inequality. 2.&bnsp;The royalty and the Church élites were unreasonably advantaged. 3.&bnsp;Dissatisfaction was rife amongst the Third Class: the farmers, workers and skilled labourers were oppressed and exploited. 4.&bnsp;The rich burgers of the cities, the bourgeoisie, were dissatisfied. (I want to be part of the. 5&bnsp;What the hell is five? Leave it open for the moment.
Religious:
1.&bnsp;The Church owned 20 per cent of the land while the majority of people had nothing. 2.&bnsp;The Church was not obliged to pay taxes. 3.&bnsp;All posts in the Church were occupied by the royalty. 4.&bnsp;The philosophers were criticising the Church. 5.&bnsp;What the hell, Jesus, where’s five! Leave it for now.
Intellectual:
1.&bnsp;French philosophers like Descartes and Locke argued that reason was grounded in nature. This gave rise to Natural Law. 2.&bnsp;New images of rationalism and enlightenment took hold of peoples imaginations. 3.&bnsp;A high premium was placed on the human mind and reason/rationalism. 4.&bnsp;Human beings were placed centrally and the rights of mankind were grounded in reason once reason was purified of superstition and preconception. 5.&bnsp;Faith was to be grounded in reason. There, good. I tried to remember the two I was forgetting. My mind was as blank as the page on which anything could just as well be written.

Last period on a Thursday afternoon. When I get out of here, I thought, Lukas and I are going riding. I hated myself for not having studied for the test; relying on one reading of the relevant chapters. I drifted from anger at a lack of academic memory into daydream; reverie; from somewhere also taking her in as she sat there, reading our stories. Still see her, recall wondering whether she had yet come to mine? A full two weeks of prep I’d spent on it, checking words, phrases, creating metaphors:
His Name Was Henk Willemse,
my story was titled. Henk Willemse was a show-off who refused to accept that an ostrich male protecting his nest was stronger and more cunning and more deliberate than himself. One day when Henk Willemse was again showing off to his farm workers how he could outwit a breeding pair, a huge male with plumage ‘that moved like the black thunder and snow clouds of the Swartberg’ rushed down on him and with his front toenail cleft Willemse open. The essay was peppered with words like koppie instead of hill, Afrikaans words here and there, and ‘the district’, ‘people said’ and ‘it was said that,’ which to my ear epitomised the way Bosnian wrote. The essay took its name from the firstsentence: ‘People of the . district still remembered that the heap of stones surrounded by red aloes on the koppie covered the bones of a man named Henk Willemse.’The rest of the essay told how Willemse terrorised the ostriches by removing eggs and often entire nests and how he then finally met his dreadful fate ‘at noon on a summer’s day when the Karoo was closer than ever to the desert it tried not to be’. The papers last sentence — in which at least an hour of writing and rewriting had been invested — was to my mind certainly the best I had ever written: ‘Years later, witnesses who had not even been there said that as the ostrich’s thick grey toenail slid through Henk Willemse’s chest and stomach, the contents of his guts spilt over the hot Karoo sand like the contents of an enormous exploding pomegranate.’ I knew she was going to be pleased. I badly needed an A for English and another for Art — the only subjects into which my prep hours had been going. Latin would be a B. Somewhere during the term Ma’am’s Latin had started to lose me. Prep had become a struggle: I could do nothing but write and paint and draw. The prefect on prep duty, noticing the movement of my arm and hand gliding across white paper, would ask what I was doing and I was always, always doing Art homework. I rushed my way through Maths homework, Natural Science homework, History homework, Geography homework. Latin translation and vocab. Afrikaans and English grammar. My Afrikaans essays were good, but my understanding of grammar and my spelling hopeless — no hope for an A there. Miss Roos came in to teach us Afrikaans. Try as I might to find an original point of access for the essay topics she gave us, I couldn’t produce anything of interest to me or her. If Ma’am had taught us Afrikaans, I felt certain, I may even have liked the language. Might even have wanted to write books or poems in Afrikaans. I loved reading and reciting Afrikaans poetry. Loved the sound of a roughly rolled r and a g almost growled from the throat. Nothing in English sounded as earthy or brought out the same colours in words as these letters in Afrikaans. But Miss Roos didn’t carry the inspiration to class or to me that Ma’am’s merepresence did. I hated the way Miss Roos was always laughing at Dom and the other English boys for getting an Afrikaans word wrong. Or the way she’d interrupt one to point out an ‘anglicism’ or a ‘direct translation that ‘makes a mockery of pure Afrikaans.’ No, Miss Roos could never inspire me to be a writer or to love and respect language. Ma’am had the gift of imparting words with the tenderness of poetry. And not only to me. Even Bennie and Lukas, who had always detested English because they spoke and wrote it so poorly, who had almost failed English every year since Standard Four, were now getting respectable C’s thanks to Ma’am’s extra afternoon classes. They now could even speak it less formally and without all the Afrikaans words stuck in the middle. Their whining about how they hated having to do an extra language had all but ceased.

Oh, why had I not worked harder. The term’s report was again sure to be one of shame. At least there’d be a pass for Music Theory, which I was no longer failing. The October holiday was just around the corner. I’m going home, I thought and cringed, no Cape tours to keep me away like in June. I’ll blame my report on choir, all the extra hours were putting in for Europe.

When Mathison knocked, she and we looked up. She pushed back her chair with us as he walked into the classroom and waved us to take our seats.

‘May I see you, for a moment, Sandra,’ his usually formal voice, gentle and firm all at once.

‘Eyes on your own work,’ she said, placing her red pen on someone’s open essay. ‘Niklaas, you’re in charge. I’ll be back in a moment.’

But it was not Ma’am a few minutes later who stepped back into my thoughts of ostrich toenails and my struggle for two further causes of the French Revolution. Mathison himself quietly entered and sat down behind her desk. His gaze swept over the bowed heads. When his eyes met mine they paused for a moment — accusing, questioning, as if suspicious that I may be cribbing — then moved off and stared silently from the window into the corridor. One brief glanceand my wool-gathering had been disturbed. My heart, within moments, was throbbing above my ribs. I looked down onto the page, tried to write but remained stuck. Tried reading over the points on the page. Someone knows, like a blue revolving light in my head. They’d found out.
5. The heartlessness of the royalty and their
... I couldn’t complete the deceptive sentence, mind reeled, panic registered in the sudden sweat of fingers around the pen.

‘Can we hand in, Sir?’ Bruin timidly from the front.

Let them eat cake. Poes. Gatkruiper.

‘Bring your papers to me and then go back to your seats. You have another ten minutes.’

. . .
refusal to give the people food.
No, I couldn’t remember anything else . . . write two more I’ve already written and hope she either doesn’t see that I’ve repeated them or thinks I didn’t know I was repeating. I could always say I’d inadvertently repeated, look up the correct ones in the meantime and spit them out were she to ask or even just frivolously list them in order to show her I knew. Tried to ignore the consternation, the heaviness in my legs. The bell rang and the last of us handed in. Mathison told us to remain in our desks: something serious has happened which he has to discuss with us. Monkey-brain. Not in front of the whole class, God, what is it, Jacques, Dominic, Uncle Klaas? Uncle Klaas may be dead in our fort; some workers found them and the police have come fromWinterton. Please, please let me be—

‘I’m afraid I received a phone call a while ago with very bad news for Ma’am. And for the whole school.’ His face is ashen, voice sombre, deep, severe. Cannot have anything to do with me. No, not through a phone call. ‘I’ve just had the terrible task of telling Ma’am that her son Graham has been killed in Angola.’The classroom is tongue-tied. The suffusing quiet of death’s news brought in the afternoon. My paranoia instantly erased. My mind returned to Ma’am: ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’ Jesus, Holy Merciful Father. Stunned; no one moved. The headmaster’s eyes a flagging metronome over the class. ‘It is atragedy for Ma’am and our country too . . . I want you all to be circumspect with her for the next few weeks.’

‘Where is Ma’am?’

‘She has gone to her cottage. There will be funeral arrangements . and she’ll probably be away for a while.’

Abruptly the room was a cacophony of questions as if a flock of hadidas had been disturbed from their roost: how had it happened? Where? Was he the only one? How is Ma’am taking it? Is there anything we can do? SWAPO? Terrorists? Kaffirs! We must have a collection for a wreath. How old was he, Sir? And Mathison answered that Ma’ams eighteen-year-old son was killed during training, during
i
manoeuvres in Angola; killed by his own instructor, that it wasn’t an enemy killing, though of course he wouldn’t have had to be in the army if the enemy wasn’t there. He said there was a dire lesson for us in the death of Ma’am’s son: South Africa was under siege. We would have to be prepared to bring our side, if needs be, to sacrifice our lives in defence of our civilisation and our entire way of life. ‘For most of you this is the first death of a soldier you knew. I can assure you it will not be the last.’ He got up from the chair and sat on the desk. ‘If South-West Africa goes, there is little hope for our country. Mozambique is gone. Angola is gone. You boys are only thirteen — some fourteen — but you have to realise that you are our future. The protection of this country is in your hands.’

When he said class dismissed, none of us moved. Only he rose, with both hands squaring off the sheath of test papers he lifted from the desk. He walked to the door, our tests held comfortably in both his hands. ‘Ma’am is a strong woman,’ he said. ‘Her first words to me when I told her, were: at least Graham didn’t die in vain. He died for his country, for us all, yesterday.’ Then Mathison was gone.

I stared at Dominic’s head in front of me: it was moving from side to side. We remained still. Some staring at their hands. Others straight ahead. Tapping a pen on the desk. Bruin and Smith lay down on their arms.

‘Webster . . . I hope you realise,’ through the silence Radys Dietz’s voice ripped a bayonet, ‘that it’s because of people like your family that Ma’am’s son is dead.’

Dominic turned. The class’s heads, eyes, moved as if on a ball to Radys at the back of the class, then to Dom. We were all quiet.

‘What?’ Dominic asked, his top lip a snarl.

‘Because you’re spoiling the kaffirs. I know what it’s like in your house. Those maids think they’re white. And the way you are with Beauty, bringing her presents all the time. You people are creating all kinds of expectations by spoiling the kaffirs. A poor kaffir is one thing, a kaffir with aspirations is quite another.’

‘Shut up, Radys,’ Lukas said, and he and some others broke the tension by pushing back their chairs and preparing to leave. Radys too rose. Bennie got up. He seemed deliberately to walk out at the side of Radys. Our eyes moved between them and Dominic. Slowly the room ran almost empty as boys drifted from the door. Soon only Bruin, myself and Dominic remained. Bruin, who forever insinuated himself into Dominic’s life, stood up and took a seat at the desk in front of Dom.

‘I don’t know how Radys could say that.’

‘Neither do I,’ Dominic said and suddenly his shoulders were shaking. I jumped up and pulled a chair closer to him. He lay on his arms.

‘Dom, don’t take Radys seriously,’ I spoke quietly from beside him, wishing I had spoken before Bruin and that Bruin would get up and leave us alone.