Embrace (64 page)

At the back of the fort the Silent One pulls the balaclava over his face, lies back and settles down to sleep. From where I sit, closer to the fire, holding my hands out to the flames, I am able to look at my great-uncle’s profile. Oupa Liebenberg. Uncle Klaas. Yet he is nothing like my mother’s father. A man I associate with tears. Oupa Liebenberg, the one who weeps when he’s happy, weeps when he’s sad. The man in front of me is one I cannot imagine crying. Of that I’m glad. He looks as dried up as a piece of driftwood, as though there cannot be any moisture left anywhere in his body, let alone in his tear ducts.

‘When last did you see Oupa?’ I ask. He mutters that he doesn’t remember. He remembers only things that are useful to remember. But from within the indifference I can hear defiance in his voice, sourced in an old wound perhaps, and I wonder why he persistently declines speaking about his brothers and my grandmother. Or anyone else of his generation. Commentary about his nieces and great-nieces and nephews and great-nephews he has: my mother the silent martyr, my mother’s late brother Uncle Gert: ‘If he hadn’t died in the mine the workers would have killed him anyway,’ Uncle Klaas said of Oom Gert one night. ‘So the rock on his neck saved him that suffering.’ But his most vicious loathing is reserved for Aunt Lena, the biggest victim and most manipulative woman on the face of the earth. All her Christian gobbledygook. Her depressions, her suffering! She out-suffers the world, my god she’s an evil woman. ‘She’s played that Liebenberg family like a fiddle since she was ten years old. The epilepsy, the dropping out of school. Good thing she had to marry

Joe Mackenzie. Now she’ll know what it is to suffer.’ Did Aunt Lena really
have
to marry Uncle Joe, I asked. Uncle Klaas changed from Aunt Lena to my cousins Lynette and Kaspasie, the most talented kids in the family but who were likely to come to nothing because of Aunt Barbara’s conservatism, her lack of imagination. The Brats, born with diamond-studded spoons in their mouths, wasted on them, the girl Joelene — what an idiotic name, that’s the Afrikaner nouveau naming there — would be a victim like Aunt Lena, the son a wash-out like his immoral father Uncle Joe.

Yet it is not my aunts, uncles and cousins I am interested in hearing of. Those I wish to hear of he never wants to speak about. I look at the tattered and bruised replica of my Oupa sitting in the firelight, feeding the fire the last of the twigs. How my grandfather hates this man. And his other brother, Great-Uncle Janus, both of whom he had to put through university by himself dropping out of school. A hundred times I have heard from Oupa and Ouma and others in the family what a mad old dog Uncle Klaas is. What a selfish arrogant snob Uncle Janus who, the moment he had his degrees, left the Western Transvaal to get away from those who had sacrificed their lives for his education. And the old mad dog here beside me. No degrees could inoculate him against the madness that drove him to trampdom.

I recall a time when Oupa and Ouma left Klerksdorp to again try and make it as farmers near the Soutpansberge. Bokkie and Aunt Siobhain drove Lena, me and James up there in the Alcamino truck. Little Kaspasie and Lynette were there for the holiday as well. The two nights our mothers stayed before they left, Oupa and Aunt Siobhain communicated through Bokkie, because Oupa couldn’t speak English and Aunt Siobhain knew no Afrikaans.

‘We were not allowed to vote,’ Aunt Siobhain said. ‘The English only allowed the rich landowners to vote.’ Then Bokkie would say: ‘Hulle het nie stemreg gehad nie, Pappie, net die rykes met grond mag gestem het.’ And Oupa would say: ‘Ja, kyk hier is ons mos ook sooskaffers deur die rooinekke behandel.’ And Bokkie would say: ‘Here, he says, we were treated like blacks by the Pommies,’ and Oupa would say, ‘in ons duisende ons vrouens en kinders uitgemoor in die konsentrasie-kampe, die Engelse,’ and Bokkie would say: ‘The English murdered thousands and thousands of us in the concentration camps, you know, his mother was in the concentration camp in Bloemfontein.’ And Aunt Siobhain would shake her head and say: ‘That’s the English for you. A million and a half people died in the potato famine, because the English insisted we should pay taxes. Even today, Dingle, the ugliest town in the world where I grew up, is underpopulated because the English took our pork, beef and grain while hundreds of thousands starved,’ and Bokkie said: ‘Pappie, sy vertel hoe daar hongersnood was onder die Iere omdat die Engelse al hulle kos gevat het, amper twee miljoen mense dood, dis nou die Katolieke, Pappie weet, want die Engelse is mos Protestante,’ and Oupa said: ‘Ag kyk, Bokkie, die boere is mos maar ook Nederduitse Protestante, en dit het nie die vuilgoedse Engelse van ons rugge afge-hou nie,’ and Bokkie would say: ‘Siobhain, he says that the Afrikaners were Dutch Reformed Protestants and that didn’t even help us against the English, they just take what they can from whomever they can.’ And Oupa would speak about how he didn’t get his first pair of shoes until he was sixteen years old and Aunt Siobhain said she didn’t taste ice cream until she came out to Tanganyika to escape the poverty of Dingle, and Oupa would say they never owned a house, always rented, and Aunt Siobhain would say they had a house but no food, that she was malnourished until she became a nurse and could eat hospital food in the nurses’ home, and Oupa would say he went for months eating only porridge to put his useless brother Klaas through university, then the aptly named Janus, and Aunt Siobhain said her family had gone for years on potatoes. And then Oupa would cry, tears streaming down his face, saying he didn’t know how one nation could be so cruel to another and Ouma would put her hand on Oupa’s arm and Bokkie would signal with her eyes to a bewildered Aunt Siobhain that it was okay, that Oupa cried often and very easily.

The Silent One was snoring.

We cousins stayed on after Bokkie and Aunt Siobhain left. We spent our days with the air rifle, shooting mousebirds and sparrows, occasional baboons to frighten them from Ouma’s vegetables, and, when the baboons became scarce, Kaspasie and I fired a few shots through Ouma’s dresses hanging on the washing line. ‘Now everyone will think Oumas wearing lace,’ Lynette chirped when a scowling Ouma discovered the damage. Lynette and I listened in on the party line, eavesdropping on the district gossip. Or, in the shade of the mulberry tree, we sat on a doek and played Monopoly or Scrabble or Snakes and Ladders. As if by divine intervention on Ouma’s behalf, we were told that during one of our forays into the bush, we had shot across farm lines and had shot out a piccanin’s eye. The next-door farmer had rushed the piccanin to hospital where the pellet was now lodged centimetres below his left brain lobe. Ouma, in a state of head-shaking agitation and terrified muttering, got us to pray and do Bible study for two hours a day. While in the afternoons she lay on the bed listening to serials on the wireless, she had four of us in the corners of the bedroom and the fifth directly in front of her against the wall, each with a Bible or hymnal, and then at night, by candlelight for there was no electricity, we again had Bible study and prayer for the dying piccanin. If he died, there would be a court case, and we’d probably all end up in reform school. Lynette, Lena and James ganged up against Kaspasie and me, demanding to know why they would be sent to reform school for something the two of us had done. I countered by saying we could never know who had fired the misguided shot, as all of us had used the air-gun, Lena more than anyone else. And James, useless with a gun, could easily have mistaken a piccanin for a baboon. We prayed incessantly and never again touched the rifle. One day the neighbour’s van pulled up and the five of us stormed towards him with Ouma shouting at us from the stoep to get back into the house.

Kaspasie was the first to reach the van. When he asked how the piccanin was doing the neighbour didn’t have a clue what Kaspaas was talking about.

Ouma stood on the stoep laughing at us.

Boiling, I tried to convince the others to run away with me. Lena and James were too cowardly, but I managed to get Kaspasie and Lynette to follow suit. We packed our little suitcases and took off down the dust road. I had the Monopoly set under my arm. The idea was to walk to Louis Trichardt, fifteen miles from there, and then to hike back to Klerksdorp. When we were no less than a mile from Ouma’s home, we saw Oupa’s bakkie heading towards us. We knew Oupa was out ploughing, so it had to be Ouma, whom we knew hadn’t a clue in the world on how to drive. Yes, it had to be her, for the bakkie groaned along in first gear as she drew near.

‘Run,’ I shouted at Kaspasie and Lynette, who fled into the bush while I ran along the road, suitcase in one hand, Monopoly in the other. Glancing over my shoulder I saw Ouma jump out of the bakkie and run after Lynette, grabbing her by the dress and dragging her back to the truck. I decided to make a dash for it. Behind me I heard Kaspasie scream as Ouma reeled him in. Soon the bakkie was near me and Ouma hooted for me to stop. I kept going. I heard the truck skid in the dust and then Ouma was running after me, brandishing a quince branch, shouting: ‘Stop you Moerskont! Kom hier, Satang!’ I was exhausted. She caught up with me, beating me as I dropped the Monopoly set. Money was blown in all directions, into the veld, up into the thorn trees. Ouma chased me around the Monopoly board that lay open in the road, beating me with the stick. When she got hold of me she took me by the scruff of the neck and forced me to pick up, one by one, the fluttering pieces of colourful money, spanking me with the quince branch for every one I retrieved.

By the time Bokkie and Aunt Siobhain came to collect us three weeks later, the story of the neighbour’s piccanin, and of being chased around the Monopoly set in the veld had turned from anger intohumour, and Bokkie said I deserved the beating both for shooting holes in Ouma’s dress and for venturing to run away into a landscape that had no life for ten miles around.

That was the first and last holiday on the farm in the Soutpansberge. The farming didn’t work out, just as it hadn’t when Bokkie was a girl in the Molopo. Back Ouma and Oupa went to Klerksdorp. Then Oupa tried selling sunflower seeds and they moved to Kroonstad where he was born. Then that didn’t work out because the market was against him and they went back to Klerksdorp. Then he worked for a panel-beater in Potchefstroom but the boss was a cheat and they went back to Klerksdorp. And each time Ouma packed up and moved house. Then he worked as— am asleep, wake from something, register where I am. Freezing. Uncle Klaas too has nodded off. The fire is nothing more than a faint red glow. I poke Uncle Klaas’s leg with my toe and say I’m going back to school. I glance at my watch. Suddenly nervousness takes hold, fear crawls up my spine, tickles my neck. I walk past things lurking in the bush beside the footpath. For the first time in hours I think of Ma’am’s son. Terror grips my chest, makes me shake and shiver as I begin to run. Sprint up the hill. It is almost two in the morning when I slide into bed. For the first time in my life I’ve been afraid of the night. Afraid of the fear.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, my child\ how are things?’

‘Fine, Bokkie, how are things there?’

‘Not much news my child, just this thing with Ma’am’s son.’

‘Ja, it’s terrible, Bokkie. Did you hear it on the radio?’

‘No, it was on TV last night. Big news. You know her sister — Miss Hope — teaches Lena at Port Natal. Him and another hoy from Florida, terrible.’

‘Ja, Ma’am has left to go to the funeral in Pietermaritzburg and were going to sing.’

‘Ag, that’s good, Karl’tjie, this must he a hitter pill for that poor woman to swallow.’

‘Ja, Bokkie. Apparently he wasn’t killed by terrorists, it was in a training accident.’

‘Oh they didn’t say that on TVJust said killed in action in the operational area. And how’s your knee?’

‘Fine, all the swelling’s gone. We heard yesterday from Mr Mathison.’

‘My boy, I’m so glad you’re going to sing at the funeral!

‘Were singing with the Infantry School choir. He’s being buried with full military honours.’

‘That’s good. Bok wants to say hello quickly. I wrote to you, okay, Karl
?
We’ll phone again next Friday. And you say your knee’s okay now?’

‘Yes, Bokkie, it’s fine.’

‘And tell the bus driver to drive car fully, okay?’

‘Yes, Bokkie. Bye, Bokkie.’

‘Philistine?’

,
‘Hello, Bok.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine thanks, Bok, how are you?’

‘Fine, fine, everyone’s fine here, healthy, business slow due to the riots but picking up. We’re all shaken by Ma’am’s son. Graham, right?’

‘Yes, we too. Were singing at the funeral.’

‘That’s good. So, how is school?’

‘Fine thanks, Bok.’

‘Are you working diligently, Philistine?’

‘Yes, Bok. We have a temp, Mr Loveday, while Ma’am’s away.’

‘And how are Lukas and the others?’

‘Everyone’s fine, Bok. Lukas’s voice has started breaking so he’s out of choir.’

‘Really! That’s amazing. He’s only thirteen.’
‘He turned fourteen in May. He spends choir down at the dairy now.’

‘How about yours?’

‘Sorry, Bok?’

1
How’s your voice?’

‘It’s fine, Bok. I love being in second soprano. We went riding to the Bushmen caves and Lukas and I found a Stone Age implement. It’s a sharp rock with indentations. It must be a Bushmen tool, I’m looking it up in the library.’

‘Oh that’s very nice. You should hold onto that. A museum would be interested in buying that. Lena won a few trophies and broke some records at the Inter-School Athletics’

‘Yes, Bok. We decided I’d keep it because I’m more interested in the Bushmen than Lukas.’

‘That’s good. Okay, quickly say hello to Bernie and Lena, and we’ll see you in a few weeks, Karl. I’ve got you one helluva birthday present.’

‘Thank you, Bok. Are you or Bokkie coming to fetch me?’