Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 27
And at the stone house she wanted to write the Italian sonnet Braham had given the grade elevens as an assignment.
Above all she wanted to go into the mountain to scream. About a law that made no sense.
She had a lot of homework, she told her mother; she was going home to study.
On the way to the house she stole Abel’s new gas stove out of the shed. To taunt him. With two gas stoves she’d be able to cook food and boil water to wash in, at the same time. She could easily afford to buy her own stoves and gas canisters, but she took pleasure in frustrating him. Now that there were no farm workers left to accuse of being thieves and squanderers, he no longer knew who to blame.
To the barn, next, where with her Victorinox she cut a piece from the canvas that covered the lucerne. The canvas up at the stone house was wearing thin and she wanted to be sure she was invisible when she lit the candle at night. To the house to fill a laundry bag with tinned food and instant soup. Sharpener and eraser. Poetry book. Two packets of candles, matches. She drew the string tight to close the bag.
Finally she fed Bamba and made him lie down on the buckskin in her bedroom. Told him to stay put and bring no one to the stone house. He had to do as she had trained him. When Abel said: find her, get her, where is she? he had to spin around as if he was chasing his own tail. You could teach a Jack Russell to obey many different kinds of instructions. To dig up Sarah’s sacred red clivias, to chew on Abel’s shoes. To hide under the bed when the doorknob turned at night.
It was horrible when the dog watched.
Four weeks earlier, in the final period of the first term, the grade elevens had started on antonyms. Opposites. No one paid attention because the holiday was just minutes away. Her own attention was fixed. Not on the antonyms, really, but because she wanted to store an image of Braham for the holiday. She didn’t want to be away from him, but she longed to swim in the mountain pool where no one could see her swollen midriff. To get rid of the jersey and school blazer in the late summer heat.
‘Not all words have antonyms,’ Braham said. ‘Or can someone tell me what the opposite is of dragonfly or hatstand?’
A ploy to keep them awake. One brave boy answered: ‘dragonfall’ and ‘hat-sit’. Laughter; everyone looked round at the hero of antonyms. So did she. Right away she could see that something was the matter with Andrea. Beads of sweat forming on her bewildered face. She had noticed Andrea limping on the way to class but had avoided starting a chat, in case it was mistaken for a sign of friendship. Everyone was laughing; no one saw Andrea wince.
Across the width of the classroom their eyes met. A soundless animal cry. Help me! Was Andrea having a heart attack? A stroke? Had her appendix burst? Sir, I’m taking Andrea out into the corridor, she’s feeling sick. The class went silent. They inched towards the door. In the corridor Andrea dropped onto all fours and lay on the tiled floor. Braham came outside and closed the classroom door behind him. Bent over Andrea.
‘Run, Gertruidah, tell the secretary to get a doctor. And bring a blanket from the first-aid room. Run!’
He called three boys out of the class. They half dragged, half carried Andrea towards the first-aid room. When they reached the stairs Braham covered Andrea with his jacket. Minutes later, before the doctor arrived, the baby boy was born on the floor of the first-aid room, with only the secretary to assist.
During final assembly she went to the rubbish bins to cry. About all of it.
I must talk to you, Gertruidah! When can I come?
Rather don’t come at all.
What would she do if, after years of moonlight dancing and saying ouch, that hurts, she finally scraped up the courage to talk to someone and that someone turned a deaf ear?
Although Braham didn’t come to tennis that first Saturday of the school holiday, she went to help in the lapa. To eavesdrop. Open skull. A web connecting the pinkie and fourth finger. A double row of tiny teeth in the upper jaw. No question of a boyfriend. And not a word from Andrea about the father.
The weekend before school started, Andrea’s mother collapsed. While she lay sedated in hospital, Andrea marched to the police office where she made a sworn statement: Her father, the honourable magistrate, was the father of the child, she said.
He was taken into custody. Kept in prison overnight. Interrogated.
He confessed and begged for mercy. The townspeople were baying for Andrea’s mother’s blood because Andrea said her mother had known about it all for years, and had once helped her abort a foetus using a knitting needle.
A team of clever, know-it-all social workers sent Andrea and the baby to a place of safety. What safety was that? Away from all that was familiar. What kind of system condoned such an injustice?
In no time the magistrate was a prisoner and the family lost their home. They moved into a tiny box house next to the municipal workshop. Two weeks later Andrea and her deformed baby boy were sent back to live with her mother and two younger brothers in the box house. She never went back to school.
Church food. Church medicine. Church soap. A charity case.
Before winter the baby died. Hardly anyone attended the funeral. There was no one from school, except her. She walked brazenly through the school gate during first break. Before second break she was back. No one had even noticed she was gone.
The laundry bag slowed her down; the mountain wind stung her face.
Keep walking. The mountain pool would be cool.
The next thing she knew, the wind had shifted and it was icy cold. The fog came in waves. Within minutes it surrounded her. She could barely see two steps ahead of her. Her father had taught her: When fog overtakes you, Truidah, crawl under a bush for shelter. Wait there; rub your skin; blow into your shirt to keep warm. Never walk in thick fog. You will step off a cliff and fall to your death. As soon as the visibility improves, use the compass in your Victorinox to keep from walking around in circles.
She kept walking. She wanted to fall from a cliff.
The child stirred inside her, like an air bubble shooting upwards.
Come, cliff, please. Fog drizzle on her lips. Andrea, forgive me. For refusing to listen to you. For comparing you to a whale.
Phantom voice in the fog. She ranted, cried, cursed. No one heard her. No one but her and the fog.
For your sake I’m sorry you told them the truth, Andrea. If you’d said a stranger had raped you your father would still be the magistrate. You wouldn’t be living in a box house and eating church food. There would’ve been no prison, no unemployment, no impoverishment, no being mocked or gossiped about.
She stumbled over a rock. Why was there no cliff?
This is not what you wanted, Andrea! I know because it isn’t what I want either. You just wanted the hell to end! Not to see your father in prison and your mother in a box house. Or to feed your child church porridge! I know, I know!
Butterfly in her stomach. Come, cliff, come.
If you’d known it would end this way, you’d have kept your mouth shut! And that’s precisely why I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Because there’s no one clever enough to make a law that benefits everyone. They think it’s in your interests to protect you and your crippled child inside an institution. Protect you from what?
The laundry bag seemed to be filled with rocks, the .22 weighed her down. The fog muffled her cries.
Why, Andrea, why are the newspapers allowed to write headlines about our unbearable pain? Why did your father have to lose his job? It wasn’t as a magistrate he came to your bed at night! It’s a disease, Andrea, which anyone can have. No one belongs in prison for having a disease! They ought to be helped, Andrea!
Why couldn’t she just point the .22 at her stomach and shoot the little butterfly? She would not give birth to this child.
If the welfare system wanted to do something to cure your father’s disease, why did they send him to jail? How will being sodomised help him? Why are there no psychiatric prison hospitals where mentally ill prisoners can receive treatment while they serve out their sentence? Where are the clever psychologists who should know there’s a difference between being a criminal and being sick? Oh, Andrea, why didn’t you rather keep quiet …?
Suddenly she found herself beside the mountain pool. So there really was an angel who guided you away from the cliff and carried you to still waters.
She stripped off her clothes. Slid into the mountain pool. Floated weightlessly. She’d never swum in fog before. It felt holy. Like living above the clouds in a house with no roof or walls or floors. She wished Braham was standing on the edge, taking off his shoes.
Floated. Reasoned herself into a state of internal consternation.
The fog was her blanket.
She climbed out of the mountain pool. Naked, she walked the short distance back to the stone house. Wrapped a blanket around her cool body. Made instant soup on the gas stove. Ate soggy Provitas. Picked Lulu up, unwrapped the blanket and looked at the hole Mama Thandeka darned all those years ago. When she was small she was afraid a baboon spider would crawl inside Lulu.
Now she was big. And pregnant. And so scared and lonely.
But one day she would cook food for her and Braham at the stone house. Dassie stew simmered with roots. They would sit on a high rock with Abel’s Zeiss binoculars that she stole out of the truck. And laugh as they watched the baboons roll prickly pears on their hairy forearms to remove the thorns. The world would be theirs.
But first the child had to be born.
Can it really be seven years since the day she got lost in the fog? How much pain can one soak up in seven years? Or seventy?
There’s a chill in the air that predicts the wind is going to shift. What could Mabel want to talk about tonight?
Walk faster to reach the stone house. Before dark she must be back at the house with the key for her school suitcase. By tomorrow night’s fairy moon, everything that belongs to Abel and Sarah must be gone from the house.
She ducks below the fishing line stretched across the path. The canvas at the entrance is hanging skew, not the way she usually leaves it. Someone’s been here. She stoops to enter. Nothing is out of place. She opens a tin of guavas. Removes the cake tin from the safe she dug in the floor and covered with a plank. Inside the tin there’s a letter from Mabel. So she’s been here.
You wear me out, Gertruidah. I had something to tell you tonight and now you tell me you’re coming to the stone house. That means I must leave Mama on her own and run up the mountain with this letter before you get here, so you won’t think I’m a thief. What I wanted to say is I fetched the cufflinks and your mother’s pearls and your grandmother’s ruby ring before the funeral. I wrapped them in newspaper and tied one of Mama’s black headscarves around it. I told Johnnie it was my death present and he must drop it into the grave before they close it up. You stole those things, Gertruidah, and they must go back where they belong. Else they will come and haunt you at the stone house. If you’re unhappy about it, then go open the grave and take them out. Greetings. Mabel.
She never wanted to steal anything. Just wanted something she could sell the day she ran away.
God cannot expect her to forgive Abel. She only has to forgive her body its human response.
With the cake tin in her lap she rests her head against the pitch-covered reed wall. Strings sentences together from all three her names. Though there are urges inside me, that does not mean there is sin. It is he that is mad, not me.
Her absolution requires nothing more.
She finds the key. Wraps Lulu in the dirty flannel blanket, drawing one end over the doll’s dull-grown eyes. Secures the blanket with the safety pin. Pupa inside a cocoon. She will lay down the pupa on the table beside the forget-me-nots.
The child of her childhood is dead. The funeral will be on Sunday after the fairy moon.
On Monday she will celebrate the first day of spring, dancing barefoot in the scorched front garden.
◊◊◊
In the middle of the afternoon, with Mabel gone in the direction of the mountain about some business with Gertruidah, I stand in front of the wall mirror to see if my hair is in place. My eyes don’t see much, but with my fingers I touch the thin rows of braids.
I ask the mirror: Kwenzekani? What has happened? What is the reason why almost all the joy on Umbrella Tree Farm has turned into tears? Where was the beginning; where will be the end? Only Nkosi knows. And He leaves people alone to work out the sums by themselves.
One evening in the year the old man was buried in Hermanus, Samuel and I were making ash cakes. The night was warm and mosquitoes buzzed around our ears. The still river pools were their breeding ground. It was a drought year. That winter the taaibos camp and the fountain camp burnt to the ground. Cows died one after the other, from the poison in wilted lucerne. Even the baboons moved closer to the yard to steal from the vegetable garden.
A thunderstorm broke and fired bright white arrows of lightning at the mountain. The wind fanned our fire so the coals glowed red-hot beneath the ash cakes. I kept wiping ash from my eyes.
‘Thandeka,’ Samuel said while he was struggling with the ash cakes, ‘I feel uneasy inside about Abel. Early this morning when we wanted to change the oil in the John Deere and I was looking for the can of tractor oil I found the old man’s wellingtons under a sack of laying mash. I showed them to Abel, because I thought he would want to keep the wellingtons on a shelf in the shed because they belonged to his father.’
‘Samuel, what made you think Abel would want to keep his papa’s old shoes …’
‘The old man lies in the ground, Thandeka. I thought that by now Abel’s bitter cup would be dry. But now I know he drinks his bitterness slowly. Because at lunchtime when I took a nap under the pomegranate tree, I heard .303 shots down by the river. Something’s wrong, I thought, best I go and have a look.’
The ash cakes came off the fire. Samuel poured sand onto the coals. We must eat inside the house, I said. No, he said, he didn’t want Mabel to hear what he was going to say.
So we sat out in the wind and watched the lightning split the clouds while Samuel told me how he peered through the reeds and saw the old man’s wellingtons. They were tied with baling wire and hanging in the weeping willow. And Abel was firing at the shoes with the big gun.
‘With every shot the rubber flew until there was nothing left, I tell you, just rags.’
‘It is his anger he is trying to shoot out of himself, Samuel. Remember, his papa …’
‘That I can understand, Thandeka. But what I can’t understand is …’
The words struggled out of Samuel’s mouth. Bit by bit he told me how Abel walked up to where the rubber rags were lying in the sand. Then he opened his fly and tossed himself empty on top of the old man’s tattered shoes.
‘It frightens me, Thandeka. It’s as if his mind got mixed up between anger and pleasure.’
I kept quiet. But in my heart I was thinking that a man’s anger sinks down into his spear. Every time he empties his spear, a splinter of his anger goes away. But it comes back. And every time it comes back his anger is a bit bigger.
Because of the shame he feels about fouling his papa’s memory.
I could not know then that his anger would never let go of him. Or that he would feed it by emptying himself on his little girl. That over time it would grow, from shame because he knew it was wrong for a man to lie with his own daughter. If I had known all this that night, I would have said to Samuel: let us pack up the donkey cart and leave this evil place to look for a new home.
But we do not know the future.
The next Sunday was Holy Communion at the town church. I was helping Missus Sarah put the Communion bread into the car, and the chocolate cream cakes for the tea after the service. Abel came outside carrying the church books under one arm. Black suit. White shirt and tie. Shiny black shoes. So handsome he looked in his Sunday best. My head wanted to believe that Samuel had lied about what he saw by the river. But Samuel wouldn’t lie.
‘Samuel,’ I asked late on Sunday afternoon when he brought our milk back from the kraal. Mabel couldn’t hear us; she was in the pepper tree with the recorder Missus Margie got us to buy for her. ‘Did your eyes see right the other day? Maybe Abel was just peeing on the shoes, like a tomcat to show who was boss on Umbrella Tree Farm …’
Samuel laughed. ‘That’s not how a man pees, Thandeka.’
Many years later while Gertruidah was hiding with Miss Lyla, Abel came here with an air-dried spare-rib for Mabel and me. From a long way off I could tell he was carrying an old man’s shoulders on his strong body. He sat at the table, like a man with no words. No eyes to meet mine, either; he kept looking at the meat pot boiling on the stove. I could tell he had been crying. He pushed away the saucer with crackling; he wasn’t hungry, he said.
I set my trap. ‘Abel, are you sick?’
‘No. Just tired.’
‘With all that cattle to round up in the mountains and dip this week, and the honey to fetch, it isn’t a wonder you are tired.’
He sighed. I waited. His words would come. He planted his elbows on the table; held his chin in his hands.
‘That’s not what is making me tired. The tiredness is inside my heart.’
Careful, now, don’t get caught in your own trap. ‘Tell me what is making your heart so tired, Abel.’
He didn’t give me an answer, just picked at the crackling and left.
One month after the baby was born, not long after I sang Gertruidah down from the windmill, another horrible thing happened on Umbrella Tree Farm. There were gunshots then too.
It was a Saturday. There were no tennis people. It was Mabel’s day off and she walked to Sweetwater to ask Missus Margie to take her library books into town. Johnnie came to tell me Abel was dead drunk and I must keep an ear out in the yard. He had made a slingshot for Littlejohn and they were going into the veld to shoot peach pips because the child had so little that made him happy. My heart went soft and I gave him two of Mabel’s Woman’s Weekly magazines for Littlejohn to look at. But Johnnie said no, the child eats all the pages with cakes and sweets on them. Then he gets constipated.
