Embrace (67 page)

After lights-out I did not for a moment contemplate leaving the school. I was terrified and exhausted. I wished it were already holiday. Just to get away from the place. For a while at least.

From walking in the veld and from Tony Poolie’s record
Call of the Wild,
no, another title I don’t remember I learnt to emulate the calls of birds and wild animals. Having mastered a new one, I’d go to the kraal to show off to Jonas and Boy. Jonas would correct me, teach me others: the hoopoo, the fruit bat, the elephant, the nightjar, the bush-baby. One I was never able to master. He did it in a way that if you closed your eyes, almost like reeds vibrating in the wind, you could hear a flock of guinea fowl pass overhead.

The six of us had left our fort, then still under construction, to take part in one of our kleilat fights. Kleilat was banned. Before our time a Senior had almost lost an eye, and so the fights took place in the utmost secrecy as far as possible from the rugby field where Teacher On Duty hovered, reading, talking to boys, or, if it were Buys, playing touch rugby with the Seniors. After rains, the groves downstream had perfect black clay to be moulded with grass or feathery wattle leaves into projectiles that stuck to the end of ones lat right till the moment it was meant to fly off and sting an enemy skin. Moreover, the wattle grove was far enough from the rugby field so that if at all heard, our muted cries would from upriver easily be mistaken for the play of campers down at the holiday park. So there we could scream, shout, holler, our sounds like dassies and birds ringing through the thickets as we sprung from behind tree trunks and shrubs, pounced, swinging a pliant green wattle sprout, which swished like a whip through the air, sending off the clammy bullet to slap its target between the shoulder blades, on the stomach, head or on an exposed leg or arm. T-shirts were stripped off and left in a heap well before the wars commenced, for while the smudge of wet clay on black cotton was at first visible only as a damp patch, it showed up like a blob of lint in neon the moment it dried in the sun. Cheetah slinking through the bush, our white bodies spotted where the lats had found any part of their target. These markings would be carefully washed off before we again slipped into our black PT shorts and shirts. Through the bracken we moved with stealth, hid behind shrubs and platoons of hundred-year-old tree ferns, lay quietly on broad branches, waiting for our prey to pass beneath us. While in these games most allegiances seemed to break down, and even the best of friends fired klei projectiles at each other, myself and a number of others still reserved our most vicious flicks for the most sensitive skins: Bruin and Mervyn. While many of us spared or pretended to spare Mervy, Bruin was undisputed fair game: not only because he was the class’s cleverest and biggest arse-creeper, but because a hit, even a touch almost anywhere on his body, resulted in squealing like that of a baboon hit by a slingshot or air-gun. No matter how distant one’s hide-out from the scene of the hit, Bruin made sure everyone — we feared even Teacher On Duty — knew he was not only wounded, but that he was experiencing the impact of the hit as beyond the limits of play and directly in the realm of torture. Lukas got Steven against the neck: a brief shriek pierced the afternoon, followed by the cry ‘ ‘Almeida hit,’ and Almeida was out for five minutes, which was the rule, sometimes changed to two or three minutes, depending on how much time we had. Mervy got Smith, Fritz got me, Oberholzer got Jimmy, and we’d sit out the minutes, then rise, on the prowl again. But not Bruin. He’d scream or fall to the ground, writhing in pain. We’d all be forced to leave our hiding places and descend on him, trying to calm him, ensure him he was not having a heart attack, that his vocal chords had not been destroyed by a huge projectile that struck his chest, or that the ball of clay that struck his head from Bennie’s lat had not contained a sharp stone that might have caused him permanent brain damage. ‘Watch out or your screaming might indeed burst a blood vessel in your brain,’ I sneered at him and he looked at me with red, pleading eyes. Bruin awakened something in all of us, though I in particular felt my buttons pressed by him. That afternoon it was Goossen who flung the klei: in flight the projectile must have split in three as Bruin was caught by shots on his chest, temple and one in the eye. There was no whining, no crying before or after Goossen’s cry: ‘Hit. Bruin dead.’ But within moments Goossen’s voice, in Afrikaans: ‘You guys! Come! I think Bruin’s really hurt.’ It had been a good day. At least fourteen of us Standard Fives were there. As soon as he knew we were all gathered around, Bruin presented us with a muddy smudge stretching from his right eye into his ear. ‘I’m blind, I’m blind,’ he cried, ‘my eye is gone.’ He wiped his eye furiously, tears streaming down his face. With much pleading, assuring, washing hiseye with water brought from the river in willing hands cupped together, we got him to stop. Soon he and we could see that indeed he could see.

Then, well before the whistle and while the sun was still warm enough to dry us, it was into the water, scrubbing mud that lay hidden in the folds of nostrils, in hairlines, behind ears. Bruin called from the bank: ‘My T-shirt’s gone from the pile.’ We ignored him and carried on washing. All the time Bruin searched through the bracken. Soon it was clear from Goossen’s smirk that he had hidden the T-shirt. When Bruin’s search delivered no results, he again resorted to tears and wailing: ‘I can’t take any more of this. I can’t.’ He stomped his foot on the riverbank while he glared at us in the water, his eyes red and his cheeks puffy.

‘You’re going to burst a vein in your head,’ I teased and around me everyone laughed. From the grassy knoll where he stood crying Bruin was threatening, as he so often did, to get his father to come and fetch him, so that he could leave the school, his cheeks now a raw pink, the white of the eye that had been struck lined crimson, like the flesh of an almost-ripe plum. When we got out of the water Goossen must have quietly retrieved Bruin’s T-shirt and thrown it into the shrinking pile. Finally, with all dressed barring Bruin, one T-shirt remained.

‘Searched like your arse!’ Goossen sneered at Bruin, who dashed forward to clutch the garment to his chest.

‘Freak!’ I sniped as the group started off, the snivelling Bruin following at a distance. I caught Almeida’s eye. Although he said nothing, I read an accusation there, something that told me he found the way I tormented Bruin unappealing. Ugly. I looked away.

Moving upstream the participants drifted apart. On route back, some of us stopped to look at the impressive fort of three Juniors. Their place was rather special, one of only a few that lay below ground level. Built into a deep donga with steps leading down into the chamber, the roof was made of stumps, reeds and a leaf covering, so that it resembled its environment, almost like a trap for big game inthe Olden Days. The way I imagined Chaka had done in Umfolozi, or like the pit used to capture King Kong on his island. Planted at the fort’s four corners were bamboo poles with red flags, warning off anyone who might inadvertently step on the roof and fall the five feet into the donga. The boys took us inside, down into the large cave-like cavern where nine of us comfortably sat. It was more than double the size of ours, in which we six and no one else could possibly fit. Light came in through two windows in the roof. Into the sides of the donga shelves had been chopped. On these were an assortment of river pebbles, empty cool-drink tins, rope, plastic bags and a slingshot. In an empty peanut-butter jar stood the bloom of an enormous blood lily. We praised the Juniors for their resourcefulness and then left, talking about how we could enhance our fort by extending the thatch along the beam closer to the river.

We crossed and headed along the footpath of cleared leaves, upstream. We were approaching the powerful structure of Harding and Reyneke, a blockhouse of huge logs. It was Dominic who snorted and pointed. I saw it, through the openings between the logs. Inside, in the dusk, four or five prefects, standing up, bare buttocks, movement. Hands shaking like pistons in front of loins. We walked on, “quiedy, as though we had not seen anything.

‘Did you see that!’ Dominic exclaimed. Still none of us spoke.

‘They were tossing each other off!’ Still waiting for a response. It was Almeida who gave it, as if on all our behalves: ‘Ignore the pigs.’

Dominic giggled and told Almeida to not be such a prude. Mervyn changed the topic by again commenting on the craftsmanship of the Junior fort we’d just visited, and Bennie wondered whether we could better enlarge ours by digging a cavern beneath the clump of hard soil around the roots of the poplar. Lukas and I said nothing. Approaching our fort I could not contain an urge to know what was going on amongst the Seniors. I had to see. I circled away from our group and once out of my friends’ view ran back towards the big fort. From a distance, I watched for a few moments, wanting to make surethat they were indeed doing what Dominic had seen. I could see the white of arms moving in the dark, an occasional laugh. Hardings voice, muted, saying: ‘Hey, not so hard, Mike. Ouch . . .’ I walked quietly to the door of the fort. Placed myself at an angle from which I would have to be seen. I stood watching them, my heart pounding. They were each busy with themselves. Raubenheimer, with his back towards me, muttering that he was going to win. It was Harding who saw me and in the same instant lifted his erection and quickly pulled up his pants. They all looked up. Raubenheimer swung around. Pants were drawn up. Faces ashen.

I stared only at Harding and Reyneke, I as speechless as they. Afraid my voice would not come out, would shake. I cleared my throat, not to speak, merely to break the silence, let them know I was not a ghost. I could not have been there for more than four or five seconds, though it felt an eternity, seemed I was seeing them through a haze.

I turned around and started off. Back upstream, my legs weighted down. Mixed with my terror was a sense of exhilarating satisfaction. As well as a blind anger. Let them stew. Let them wonder how much I saw and heard. I was not quite sure of all I’d seen or of exactly what they’d been doing. What would they do to me? Nothing! I’ve got the bastards by the balls. From behind me came rapid footsteps swashing through the dry leaves. I waited to be struck by a fist in the back, refused to turn around and face my attackers, ready to spew that if they touched me they’d only be in deeper shit. Reyneke was alone: ‘Listen, Karl, tell Mathison about me, but don’t say anything about Harding, Raubenheimer and Cooke, please. Tell on me, but not on them.’ He now walked backwards in front of me. I was terrified, but acted as in control of the situation as I knew how, trying not to meet his gaze. I smirked, shaking my head. I had no intention whatsoever of telling. Wanted them only to know that I knew.

Reyneke grabbed me by the arm and forced me to stand still, facing him.

‘Karl. Please be reasonable.’ He looked me deep in the eyes, his cheeks flushed. It was to me as though I were really seeing him for the first time. He was no longer the big man who with Harding had been terrorising me for almost two years. He was in front of me, his eyes direct, but not fearful. I wanted to see fear, humiliation. Where were the others, why had they sent Mr Reyneke? I hated Harding more than Reyneke. Harding, the cousin of Mary-Alice and Betty. It must have been a month or two after I arrived. It was pocket-money day and I was with Lukas and Bennie, standing at the fence of the game camp, watching the zebra and eland. Harding and Reyneke, then in Standard Six, arrived with their purchases. Lukas was speaking about the zebra. We were minding our own business. Reyneke was telling Harding that the boo boooh, like the growling of a lion, was coming from the eland bull in the distance. Turning to them I said: ‘No, it’s from the ostrich, over there, look, you can see its beak and throat, watch, it’s puffing.’ It was the first time I had spoken to either of the Seniors, and had not thought it a transgression. The next day I was stopped by them on the stoep. Harding, in front of Reyneke, said: ‘You’re the fairy in the red dress. You ran around the streets of Toti in a red dress. My cousin told me.’

I denied it flat.

Did not dream of saying it had been Harding’s auntie’s blue chiffon.

But they kept up the story. Once. Twice a term. In front of teachers, my friends, my enemies: ‘Tss, tss, De Man. Where’s your red dress?’

‘Take your hands off me, you disgusting pig,’ I now said to Reyneke, pulling loose and starting off. For an instant I thought of asking him, blackmailing him and Harding, to never again mention the dress. But I couldn’t, couldn’t ever do it. To ask them to keep quiet about it would mean it was somehow true.

Karl, come on, we were just having some fun.’ He spoke from behind me.

‘Then why are you afraid?’

‘Tell on me, then, if you must tell. Not on the others. And we can just deny it, were Seniors.’

‘I wasn’t the only one who saw you’ And with that I walked off, leaving him behind. I was terrified and elated at the power I wielded over them. I wished I’d seen them doing this when I had first arrived at the school. I thought of the night with Buys and Mathison and Cilliers. Did not know why it would have helped had I known about Harding and Reyneke then, but somehow it would have lightened what Buys did to us and the humiliation of Mathison’s soliloquy.

The whistle blew and I waited in the pathway for my friends. Almeida was ahead as they cut across Second Rugby Field and I started towards them.

‘Karl,’ a voice behind me I recognised at once as Bruin.

‘What do you want?’ I said, trying to move off before anyone saw me hanging around with the class sissy.

‘I want you to stop teasing me. Please stop while I’m talking to you.’

‘The whistle went, didn’t you hear.’

‘Why must you always pick on me?’

‘I don’t always pick on you, Bruin.’ As we made our way through the bush. Dominic and the others had spotted me and curved towards where I was emerging from the trees.

‘It hurts me when you speak to me like that.’