Thula-Thula (English Edition), page 31
She places the photo album on the cast-iron table.
Goes back inside. She works relentlessly, tossing things over the wall. Magazines, newspapers, a globe, a model of the moon. Farm documents and accounts are all backed up on her computer. Discard. Keyboard, mouse and printer. Along with memories of being dragged into his office where he’d key in his credit card number to gain access to repulsive websites. Try sitting like that one, Truidah. Don’t you think it’s pretty, the way she’s completely shaven down there? We must get you some red stilettos, and a red lace bra and panties …
She was there and yet, at the same time, she was walking through the plantain field with Braham. She wanted to show him the black eagle’s nest, the jungle of umbrella trees on the southern rise of the kloof. They might find edible mushrooms and ripe blackberries. The pinch of the stapler brought her back from the plantain field. Abel reached for a men’s tissue from the box.
The filing cabinet. She sprints through the label tags. Bank statements. Telephone bills. Subscriptions. Minutes of the church council and cultural society. Schedules of cattle shows. Everything flutters over the wall. She sets aside a handful of files concerning farm business. The administrators of the estate will need the rest. She packs it in boxes she finds in the laundry room.
Bonsmaras. She must learn all there is to know about every cow, in order to sell them for the best possible price and raise capital for her prickly-pear venture.
Medical records. Proof that he had a vasectomy on 25 July 2000. Thank you. So he’d had a shred of conscience after all.
The title deeds to Umbrella Tree Farm, her property now.
Signed promises inside a file labelled ‘Abel Strydom: personal’. Sarah, I give you my word in writing that I will leave Gertruidah alone in exchange for two hundred thousand rand to settle the account at the co-op. There are several more signed undertakings. Each one given in exchange for money. Each time with the promise to leave her alone.
Had her mother in fact cared and hoped that it would end? Or had it been a dirty game designed to humiliate Abel?
In a small corner of her brain there is space for the thought that Sarah’s inheritance gave her a hold over Abel. Over the recce in whose own heart his name would always be paraded on the Wall of Shame.
She stacks the files she may need in the far corner of the stoep. With a heavy shard from Sarah’s shattered clay pot on top, so the wind won’t blow them away.
Inside a file labelled GERTRUIDAH, she finds her school reports. Her birth certificate. A sticker printed with her names from when she was christened. Awards for tennis. And, incredibly, the letter she once wrote to the minister. There is also a typewritten letter on school stationery. Dated June 2001, the year she repeated grade eleven after she returned from East London, supposedly with a mended shoulder. It is signed by Braham, and it stuns her.
Some time during the winter holiday of her second grade eleven year Braham challenged her to a match on the school’s tennis court. She’d run into him at the co-op where she’d gone to fetch chicken feed.
‘Good afternoon, Sir. I thought you’d have left on holiday by now.’
‘Not until the last week. The matric workshops take precedence over holidays, I’m afraid. I just popped in for ant poison …’
‘It’s over there,’ pointing out the shelf with insecticides. Then she backed away because she didn’t like him to see her in her farm overalls.
‘Wait. Tell me how you’re getting on with the tennis-ball machine.’
Half-heartedly: ‘So-so, I guess.’
‘How about a game on the school court? Just for exercise.’
‘Surely you’re not looking to get a hiding, Sir?’ She managed a laugh.
‘We’ll see about that. Now let’s agree on a day and time …’
Friday. Ten o’clock. The best out of five sets, like the men’s contest at Wimbledon.
She washed and polished the Corsa. Rubbed cream into her legs. Pulled on the black Lycra shorts. On her way into town, an upwelling of joy.
A warm-up game, then the coin-toss to serve. Surprise when he chose to start facing the sun. She played with precision, concentration, cunning. The world ceased to exist. Nothing existed but her, the racquet, the ball, the court.
And Braham.
They drew level at two sets each. She seemed to have wings on her feet.
When they stopped to drink water and switch sides for the fifth and final set, they brushed lightly against each other at the net post.
‘Gertruidah?’
He would get no mercy from her. Nor would she ask for any. ‘Sir?’
‘I know it’s a little soon to ask. But on the day you put down your pen at the end of your last grade twelve paper, I want to come and call on you. Can we fix that date today?’
A warm glow suffused her. ‘No. Call me on that day to fix the date.’
The exchange cost her her nerve, and the match.
Staring at his letter amid the chaos in the office, she can scarcely believe what she’s reading.
24 August 2001
Dear Mr Strydom
The school has delegated me to attend a tennis coaching course in Cape Town for a week during the September holiday. The principal having agreed to appoint an assistant coach, I hope to secure your permission for Gertruidah to accompany me on the course. She’d be an enormous help coaching the junior players. The school will cover her costs and she can travel with me. I realise that she helps you on the farm during the holidays, but I hope you will let her take advantage of this opportunity. Please let me know your decision as soon as you and Mrs Strydom have discussed it, so I can arrange her registration and hotel reservation. I won’t mention it to her for now, at least not until I’ve heard from you.
Yours sincerely. Braham Fourie.
She’d known nothing about it right up to this moment. The bastard! She could’ve gone with Braham to Cape Town, but Abel had isolated her, as always. This she can never forgive him!
Braham knew she’d had an illegitimate child, a child of shame. But instead of making it a piece of juicy gossip, he’d continued to value her. Wasn’t ashamed to be seen with her, wanted to take her dancing, to be his partner at staff functions. Introduced her to his parents and asked her to marry him. Promised to take her to Avignon some day.
And instead of running towards him she ignored the open cage door because of a lifetime of believing she was a loser and a whore.
Damn you, Abel Strydom!
She hears herself scream. The paperweight shatters the window. With the carpenter’s square she sweeps the fan from the top of the filing cabinet. Tears the church almanac from the wall and rips it to pieces.
A great wall breaks inside her heart. Twenty-two years of madness rupture in a single moment this very morning.
The strength to topple the desk comes from nowhere. She picks her way through the rubble on the floor and runs outside.
The bedroom can wait. It can all wait.
She fetches the petrol from the shed. The heavy drum feels almost weightless. She soaks everything, until the drum is empty. Then she drags the hosepipe closer. Opens the tap. Runs to where Johnnie is digging in the vegetable garden, her nightgown flapping around her. To ask him to help her should the wind come up and the fire get out of control.
‘Heavens, Missy, your papa and mama worked hard to …’
‘Yes, Johnnie, I know. But who cared about what I was accumulating?’
‘Missy …?’ He looks confused.
She ignores him. On the way back to the house, she gathers her nightgown around her knees so she can run even faster.
A strike of the match.
The smell of sulphur.
She tosses the match onto the mountain of rubbish and stands back. Within seconds the flames are licking at a memoir soiled with black fingerprints. Waves of heat follow her as she retreats to the front door. Balls of smoke. Blasting sounds. The crackle of fire.
Somewhere at her core she splits and becomes two people.
The one cries.
The other rejoices.
She sinks down onto the threshold. Sits cross-legged and watches the tongues of fire. It’s as if after years of painful shocks she’s finally rushing from the cage.
The heat irradiated Gertruidah. Her rage died. Hatred retreated. Gertruidah greeted the truth.
Around noon, the fire is spent. Smoke curls slowly out of Grandma Strydom’s dressing table and the smouldering mattress.
She blows her nose on her nightgown. Slings the .22 over her shoulder. Picks up the water bottle. Walks over to Johnnie to ask him to keep an eye on the garden and spray it with water once the smoke clears.
Then she starts walking to the stone house.
This time her feet don’t have to keep to the rocks and hard ground. She’s allowed to leave a trail. She seems to skim the bushes on a slow flight to the stone house. She longs for Braham so much it hurts. And for Bamba. Dull eyes she will never forget. The echo of the final gunshot that will haunt her nightmares forever.
Her matric dance was on a spring day in her grade twelve year, a Saturday night. She didn’t want to go because she was afraid Bamba would die alone. Late that night when the doorknob turned, she laid him down on the buckskin and pushed him under the bed.
‘Your room stinks of dog shit!’ Abel was horribly drunk. ‘You’d better have that damn dog put down, or I’ll shoot him myself!’
It upset her when Bamba barked at his own shadow. Or when the senile dog scratched at the fridge door when he wanted to go out. ‘Please, Pa, I couldn’t bear it …’
‘That creature is always shitting and pissing in the house! I’m fed up with struggling with the dog!’
Bamba was all she had. Blind Bamba.
When Abel and Sarah left for church the next morning, she carried Bamba up the mountain. Even though he was blind, she showed him the places where the two of them had walked so often. Veld paths. Mountain pool. Stone house. She opened a can of bully beef, but Bamba didn’t want to eat. And when the twilight longing overcame her, she fetched the .22 and lay Bamba down on the western side of the stone house.
She felt the impact of the shot inside her own head.
She didn’t go back home until the following Sunday. A week out of school to grieve at the stone house, alone. On Monday she wrapped his tiny cold body in an old jersey and carried him to where the scarlet chinkerinchee flowered.
She used the stolen spade to bury him.
When afterwards she went to the stone house, she always carried a few river stones with her to mark the boundary around the small mound of soil.
She barely remembers the walk to the stone house. The fire has deposited a smoky haze over Umbrella Tree Farm. Her white nightgown is dirty and torn. However did she get here? And where did she put the .22 and the water bottle? Has she finally gone mad?
She crawls past the entrance and huddles inside the warm hollow. Not a sound anywhere, not even a bird. It is as if the mountain has gone to sleep with her.
When she wakes up her mouth is sticky and dry. Outside it is dark, because of the fairy moon. She uses the torch of her Victorinox to find the water bottle. The smell of smoke has gone. She isn’t hungry. She wraps the blanket around her and rejoins the dark mountain in sleep.
At sunrise she washes herself in the icy mountain pool. Shuffles back to the stone house to put on clean clothes and a long-sleeved T-shirt because she is cold. Brushes her teeth with water from the green water canister. While she’s struggling to comb the knots from her hair, she hears rocks crash onto the footpath. She makes it to the top of a tall rock in time to see Mabel’s red jersey disappear behind a cherry tree, veering away from the footpath.
Could it really have been Mabel? Mabel would never walk into the fishing line. She picks up the .22 and plants herself in front of the stone house.
Braham Fourie is walking up the footpath.
He’d never have found the stone house on his own. Mabel must have brought him and knocked over the tin to warn her.
She stows the .22 against the stone wall. And waits.
◊◊◊
I sit at the kitchen table with the bread knife. It will soon be lunchtime. And I say: Gqithisa isonka. Pass the bread. Galela iwayini. Pour the wine.
It’s yesterday’s bread in the shallow plate; I’ve cut it into tiny cubes. It’s Mabel’s sweet wine for baking biscuits on the table. This is my day of Holy Communion. Because the man didn’t need fetching; he came on his own. And the house didn’t burn down, or the garden. Tears run into the wrinkles in my old woman’s face. They are tears of joy, Communion tears.
The man was here even before the sun came up behind the mountain ridge. As if he had heard my silent call. He was looking for Gertruidah, he said. He had been calling for days, and no one answered.
‘She is at the stone house,’ Mabel said. ‘She wants to be alone.’
‘Please take me to her.’
‘She has a gun. She will shoot you.’
‘No, she won’t.’
‘Take him, Mabel,’ I said. Then I looked into his eyes. ‘If you break Gertruidah’s heart, Nkosi will break your legs one by one. This you must understand …’
Then they left, the teacher and Mabel.
Now I’m sitting here at my Communion table and I pray that the next road Nkosi makes for Gertruidah will be a good one. And that He will help her sweep the dirt from the road she leaves behind.
Gqithisa isonka. Pass the bread. Galela iwayini. Pour the wine.
I place the cube of bread on my tongue. Bring the biscuit wine to my lips. And I know that Nkosi sees us all.
When I finish swallowing, I sing the song I’ve sung so many times before when I didn’t know which way to go. Seng’ya vuma, Seng’ya vuma, Somandla … Send us Lord, Send us Lord, in your Name …
◊◊◊
Thirty steps left. He looks up at her and waves.
Twenty steps. Ten. Five.
Then he’s so close she can touch him.
She places her hands flat against his chest. To push him down the mountain. But she doesn’t push.
‘I am here to ask if you still want to start the farm school. And if there might be a vacant post from January.’
It’s not a dream.
‘January is prickly-pear time. It will be the factory’s first season. What I’m looking for is a full-time factory manager.’
‘May I apply even though I know nothing about prickly pears?’
‘You’ve just been hired, Braham. Now you only have to choose which of the labourers’ cottages I must get fixed up for you.’
They dangle their feet in the cold mountain pool, eating guavas from a tin and letting the sun warm their shoulder blades.
‘When school breaks up in December I’m going to France, Gertruidah, to Avignon, to see the ruins of the Saint Claire church.’ He holds out his hand to her. ‘Will you come with me?’
She threads her fingers through his.
One day Abel’s image will fade. One day, the clock ticking inside her head will grow silent. One day she will make a beautiful memoir that she will never want to bury.
‘Yes, Braham, I will.’
The End
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Copyright © Annelie Botes 2011
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Available in print:
First edition, first impression 2011
ISBN: 978-0-624-04924-1
Epub edition:
First edition 2012
ISBN: 978-0-624-05373-6 (epub)
Mobi edition:
First edition 2013
ISBN: 978-0-624-06107-6 (mobi)
Annelie Botes, Thula-Thula (English Edition)
