When Time Fails (Silverman Saga Book 2) (15 page)

Annamari’s knuckles whitened. She ground the Nokia into her ear, trying to stop her hands from trembling.

‘Ma? Ma – are you still there?’

Arno’s voice was distant, muffled by the roaring in her ears. ‘Ja, I’m here.’

‘Ma, did you hear what I said? Isn’t it fantastic... Ma?’

‘Yes.’

‘What? Ma this is a really bad line. What did you say? I can’t hear you?’

‘Yes, Arno.I heard you.’ She sucked air into her lungs. ‘It’s wonderful news
,
seu
n
. I’m... I’m happy for you – I’m...wait, here’s Pa. You tell him.’ She thrust the phone at Thys who had just walked into the lounge.

‘Hello?’ she heard her husband say as she tore open the French doors and stumbled out on to th
e
stoe
p
. She rested her hand on the wood pillar next to the steps leading down to the garden, absently picking at the tiny flakes of fading white paint. She gazed across the fields towards the poplars. They were still there. The sky was blue. Not as blue as in summer, but still blue. Fluffy white clouds were dotted here and there. Not rain clouds, the other kind. Cumulus. The late autumn sun was shining brightly. Steyn was pretending to be a jet taking off and landing as he charged up and down the lawn. Nothing had changed. The world was still turning. But her world was falling apart. As she had been waiting for it to do ever since she’d cheated on Thys, and then lied about it.

How could she have thought she would get away with it? She should have insisted that Arno give up his dream of making it in Jo’burg and come home to Steynspruit where he would be safe. Despite the land claim. This was their home. He would be safe here. She would be safe. They would all be safe...Especially now she was sure that Beauty was no longer interested in Arno. In any of them. Beauty had made that abundantly clear. She hadn’t phoned back about the land claim. Instead, she had posted a detailed letter to Petrus with instructions on what to do, what to say. Annamari pressed her fist into her stomach to stop the gnawing hurt.

But right now, Beauty’s strange behaviour was the least of her worries. She could even handle losing Steynspruit if the land claim went against them. But she’d die if... she couldn’t lose Arno. Or Thys. She couldn’t lose her family. Everything she had tried to build, everything she had achieved, everything... it was all about to come crashing down.

‘
Liefi
e
?’ She heard the concern in Thys’ voice.

She felt his hand on her shoulder, but she kept her eyes glued to the poplars, blinking furiously. His hand tightened.

‘Annamari, come on! Talk to me. I love you, you know that. Talk to me... please.’

She swallowed, brushed her hand over her eyes and turned, burying her face in her husband’s chest. She felt his arms go around her, holding her, loving her, protecting her – like he always did. What would she do without him? When he found out. As he was sure to, now... now that...

‘Oh Thys, I’m....I’m... I’m okay. Really. It’s just that Arno’s news – I’m so happy for him. What a fantastic opportunity. He’s lucky to get such a good job. Really. It’s wonderful. It’s just... I was hoping... maybe I was just being selfish, you know? I was almost hoping he wouldn’t get a job and would come home. I mean, just another week – he’d said if he hadn’t got a job by the end of the month, he would come home. And now... well, now he won’t. Oh Thys, I hope I’m not going to lose my...our son.’ She couldn’t help it. She sobbed.

‘Shhh, shhh, shhh,’ Thys rocked her. ‘You won’t lose him. We won’t lose him. He’ll always be ours. Yours and mine. No matter what.’

Annamari pulled back. She tried to read his eyes, his thoughts. But all she could see was his dear, dear face creased with concern and love.

‘
Liefi
e
, this will always be Arno’s home. Our home. I promise.’

‘Really?’

‘Look, Arno is a sensible boy. He won’t allow himself to be seduced by ... you know. The big city and all that. I think – I know – he loves Steynspruit. But Steynspruit, Driespruitfontein – it’s too small for him. He has such a lot to offer the world and, well, we should be grateful that Alan is willing to give him the opportunity.’

Annamari shuddered. She knew Arno had applied for every job he possibly could, but that didn’t make it any easier that he had gone and applied for a position at – what was the name of his business? Arno had told her but she hadn’t heard. She hadn’t known Alan Silverman was back in the country, let alone the owner of some big, fancy schmancy company that was even listed on the stock exchange. What on earth had made Arno apply for a job as a salesman, for heaven’s sake? He hadn’t studied for four years at university – he hadn’t graduated wit
h
cum laud
e
in marketing – to be a salesman! So why had he? And why had that man, that... Alan Silverman, himself – why had he interviewed Arno? She didn’t know much about business, but she knew enough to know that the big boss at a big, fancy company like that didn’t interview salesmen. Did they? Alan must have realised. She and Thys – they were the only van Zyls in the Driespruitfontein district. If there was one thing she knew about Alan Silverman, it was that he wasn’t stupid. He must have seen Arno’s date of birth, his ID number. He must have figured it out. So what was he playing at? What did he want? She forced herself to listen to Thys’ soothing voice.

‘Alan Silverman is a good man
,
liefi
e
. He will take care of Arno. I’m sure of that.’

Annamari stiffened but Thys didn’t seem to notice and rubbed his hand up and down her back soothingly.

‘It’s incredible, really, when you think of it. How well he’s done for himself,’ Thys said. ‘I’m sure he gave Arno the job – not that Arno didn’t deserve it, of course. But I’m sure he gave Arno a chance because of ....well ... our friendship, I suppose, although I could have been a better friend to him. I should have been a better friend.’

‘You don’t think he’s going to take it out on Arno?’ she asked. ‘You don’t think he’s going to ... I don’t know ... be mean to Arno because of the way ... because of how he was treated in Driespruitfontein?
’
Because of what I di
d
, she thought.

Thys shook his head. ‘No way. Alan isn’t like that. We’re the ones who treated him shamefully, all of us. I don’t blame him for leaving the country like he did. And I’m so proud that he came back and has done so well. He deserves it. Arno will learn a lot from him.’

Annamari swallowed the bile in her throat. How like Thys to believe that Alan Silverman had been a good friend to him. But she knew better. Oh boy, did she know better! Good friends don’t go around seducing their best friend’s girlfriend. And Thys was such a good man. Such a good, good, stupid, blind, trusting man. She prayed that his naive faith in his old friend wasn’t about to be shattered.

‘Well, I don’t suppose Arno will have much to do with Alan Silverman,’ she said, crossing her fingers behind her back. ‘I mean, he’s just going to be a salesman and they probably have dozens of salesmen.’

Thys beamed at her. ‘No. Didn’t Arno tell you? He’s going to be Alan’s assistant, and Alan is going to teach him the business from the ground up.’

The horror Annamari felt when Arno had broken his exciting news to her slithered like a python up from her bowels and squeezed the air out of her lungs.

Annamari tripped over the widening crack on th
e
stoe
p
stairs as she hurried towards the house, her breath hanging in clouds in her wake. She pulled off her gloves and fumbled with the door knob. It was getting looser. There was so much that needed fixing. They had discussed it, she and Thys, over and over again but while the house remained more or less in one piece, it would just have to wait.

Things were tough and anyway, she and Thys had agreed when they established Kibbutz Steynspruit that they would live on their kibbutz allowance, like all the other kibbutz members. The little the kibbutz could pay towards the rather complicated “rent-to-own” scheme they had set up in order to transfer ownership of the bulk of Steynspuit farm to Kibbutz Steynspruit was all they had available for extras, if you could call De Wet’s high school fees an extra. It didn’t help of course that this year Kibbutz Steynspruit was paying even less because they needed a new irrigation system, or the fact that last year’s wheat crop had also been far smaller than usual. Drought. And there was nothing they could do about the sagging international wheat price. Or that they had to pay for a high-powered lawyer for the TRC hearing – and might need to pay even more for a lawyer to fight the land claim. So, ja, money was very tight.

Perhaps next year would be easier and they would finally be able to tile th
e
stoe
p
, and even paint the house a little because De Wet would be finished school – if he passed matric. And if he won a Sports Scholarship to Free State University that would be a huge help. Fortunately, with Steyn now enrolled in the Kibbutz Steynspruit school with all his friends rather than at Driespruitfontein Laerskool like Arno and De Wet had been, they wouldn’t have to pay school fees for him for at least six more years. Perhaps even longer. Everyone knew that the quality of the education at Driespruitfontein Laerskool – and even the high school – was terrible and getting worse. It was so, so sad. She and Thys and Christo and ... and everyone, they had all learned to read and write in the whitewashed stone building. Her mother too. But now, it wasn’t the same. Even Thys was no longer confident it would come right. Annamari was a little concerned that having your mother as your teacher and your father as headmaster might not be the most appropriate situation for a bright child like Steyn. But Thys said it wasn’t all that different to home schooling – and more and more children, particularly white children, were being schooled at home by their parents nowadays.

Annamari pushed the door open and bit her lip when she saw De Wet still ensconced on the couch.

‘Ma. It’s freezing,’ he complained without taking his eyes off the flickering television.

Annamari dragged the door closed, marched quickly to the large TV set and switched it off.

‘Ma, no!’ De Wet protested.

‘You’re supposed to be studying,’ she said and poked at the embers in the grate, before adding another log from the pile next to the stone fireplace. ‘Anyway, watching this lynching only upsets you. If you want to study in the lounge, because it’s nice and warm in here, that’s fine. But not with the TV on.’

‘He was crying, Ma. Hansie was crying. Why are they doing this to him, Ma? After all he’s done for this country? Why are they tearing him apart like this?’

‘He lied, De Wet. He cheated. He took bribes and then he lied about it.’

‘But he never threw any games. He said so. He said he’d made a mistake. He’s sorry about it. You can see how sorry he is. Why won’t they just leave him alone?’

‘Because he’s the South African cricket captain and he used his position to cheat. And then he lied. For years and years...he betrayed his team, his country... even his family.’ She turned away and wiped some imaginary dust off the top of the TV, hoping De Wet wouldn’t notice her burning cheeks.

‘People make mistakes, Ma. That’s what Pa always says. He says when people make mistakes we shouldn’t judge them. We should forgive them. But they won’t forgive Hansie, will they?’

***

‘I wish that whole Hansie Cronje thing would just go away now. Enough is enough,’ Annamari said as she switched off the heater. She clambered into bed, snuggled up against Thys and rubbed her feet against his.

‘Hey!’ Thys yelped. ‘Your feet are like blocks of ice. I feel so sorry for him. It’s like they’re crucifying him – on public television. It’s so... I think it’s cruel to humiliate him like that.’

‘I don’t know. He has betrayed everyone. It’s not only that he cheated. He flipping lied about it. That’s the worst. That’s unforgiveable.’

‘He made a mistake
,
liefi
e
. A big mistake, but he’s obviously sorry about it and who are we to judge him? Until we have been in his position, faced the temptations he faced... I don’t like what he did but now he has to live with himself knowing that he has messed up his entire life.’

‘And what about De Wet?’ Annamari demanded, propping herself up on one elbow and glaring down at her husband. ‘What about what he’s done to our son and the millions of other young boys who looked up to him, believed in him – wanted to be like him.’

‘Well, I suppose the good thing about all this is that De Wet – all of us really – we’ve all learned a valuable lesson.’

‘Really? And what lesson would that be? Not to cheat and take bribes?’

‘Ja, there’s that, of course. But think about it. Hansie has shown us that even great sports stars are human with human frailties, no matter how much we try to elevate them to the status of idols. We are all raised to believe that we should only worship the Lord and that only the Lord is infallible. But no, what do we do? We create human idols. And when they fall, when they make mistakes – because that’s what people do, we all make mistakes – we turn on them like a pack of dogs and tear them apart. Who are we to blame them when they don’t, or can’t, live up to our expectations? Are we, ourselves, blameless? I pray... I hope that those he has hurt find it in their hearts to forgive him; and that he learns to forgive himself.’

‘Well I don’t think cheats and liars deserve forgiveness,’ she said.

She felt Thys’ eyes boring into hers before his arms reached out and pulled her down onto his broad chest.

‘Everyone deserves forgiveness
,
liefi
e
. Everyone,’ he said, and kissed her.

***

The next morning, at breakfast, Annamari held her tongue as Thys talked quietly to De Wet about the disgraced South African cricket captain.

‘You need to forgive Hansie, son. Otherwise, you will let your anger get in the way of the rest of your life. It will eat at you and possibly even prevent you from achieving your own dreams. Forgive him, De Wet, and then move on.’

Annamari shook her head and turned away. She didn’t want to argue, not in front of De Wet. Anyway, there were more important things to worry about today than whether Hansie Cronje had really been tempted by the devil, as he had claimed, or whether he was just a good old-fashioned lying cheat.

She gingerly fingered the envelope. It contained her life. Her future. Their future.Using Beauty’s formal, comprehensive instructions as a guide, she, Thys and Petrus had drafted a response to the land claim notice. They had stated that they would fight the claim; that they had proof of ownership of Steynspruit going back to before the Boer War. And they had outlined the whole Kibbutz Steynspruit scheme. According to Petrus, Beauty had said their objection letter was “fine”; so this morning, Annamari was going to take it to the post office in Driespruitfontein, register it and send it to the Free State and Northern Cape Regional Land Claims Commissioner
.

Then all they could do was wait. Wait and pray. Although she didn’t have too much faith in prayer. It didn’t seem to be working for her. Beauty was probably correct when she advised Petrus that they should hold off pumping any more money into Steynspruit until they had a better idea of just where the whole land claim thing was going.

‘She said we shouldn’t even consider putting in the new irrigation system but I don’t think we have a choice. The drought doesn’t look like it’s going to end,’ Petrus had said.

The issue was going to be discussed at the kibbutz members’ meeting tomorrow, after the Sunday church service in the Kibbutz multipurpose hall. Annamari had no doubt they would vote overwhelmingly in favour of going ahead with the irrigation system, especially if Petrus advised them to. They simply could not, would not, believe that they could lose the farm.

Annamari didn’t share their naive optimism. Just look at what was going on up there in Zimbabwe with land invasions and white farmers being driven at gunpoint from their homes. The land claim against Steynspruit was just a more sophisticated way for the government to take their home from them. But steal it, they would. Everyone knew that.