Tribe, page 16
“And Olivia? Fuck, boet, if anyone took it like a man, it was Olivia. Fuck knows how she kept those beautiful eyes!” Hannes slaps Ben on the shoulder.
Pierre looks out, lost in a memory. “Eyeballing Olivia. I’d just got to London from South Africa, never seen a girl like her, she had it going on.”
Lillie looks slightly displaced. “What is eyeballing?”
Tselane laughs. “It’s crazy, only Olivia would do something so crazy.” She shudders and turns to Lillie. “Olivia would hold the vodka bottle to her eye and literally down it into her eye – like this.” She grabs a bottle of soda from the cooler bag and pretends to pour it into her eye. “It was insane. She was famous for pouring shots into her eye.”
“It’s a wonder she’s not blind in her right eye,” Ben says.
“The wonder was that everyone thought it was sexy,” Jude says.
“We did, we all thought it was edgy,” Pierre muses.
“So you got to London and saw Olivia and she was sexy and had it all, like, going on?” There’s no amusement in Lillie’s laughter.
“Not like you,” Pierre tells her. “In a different way. Everything was different.”
The boys, who until a moment ago were absorbed in their iPads, look at the adults with the studied suspicion of children who know they’re being excluded from something that involves them.
“What was different, Dad?” Balthazar asks.
“Life, the world, we didn’t have iPads for one thing.”
Simon looks suspiciously at the grown-ups, then turns to his brother and, says matter of factly: “Balth, it was when Mum used to dance on tables and wear short, short skirts. Gran couldn’t control her and they never thought she would amount to anything, that’s why whenever Mum talks Gran is startled.”
Everyone looks at Simon, stupefied. “Where’s that from, Simon? All that information?” Ben asks.
“I hear things, Dad, I’m not a mute, you know.”
A giggle runs through the jeep, amused and nervous. People are always unnerved by insightful children. There’s a ripple of unease as the adults gaze into the bush, looking for a bird, a leaf, anything to distract the boys.
“Simon, Balthazar,” Hannes says, “when Kit-Kat was little we used to play a game. The first to spot an animal would get to choose the dessert for dinner. D’you want to do that?”
“Yes, but could we please use the binoculars? Balth, let’s be sensible about this. You look to the left, I’ll look to the right.”
“Okay, maybe we’ll thpot a big five.”
The two boys stare out, passing the binoculars between them, deep in concentration. Simon to the right, Balthazar to the left.
Katrina isn’t fond of children or domestic animals, but she remembers that when her parents got divorced people had a patronising tone reserved for her. They’d have brief perfunctory chats with her, then resume conversations about her father in the adult tone they assumed she didn’t understand.
TSELANE
“Do you miss it? Partying the way you did, when you rocked the world?” Zac asks.
“I do.” Ben looks wistfully at the others.
“I miss the unbearable lightness of being,” Jude says, smiling.
“I would have thought you achieve unbearable lightness doing your sweaty yoga, don’t you?” asks Pierre. “But I guess there’s nothing like being together, on a dance floor, in a pub. Just being a tribe.”
“We had a good youth,” Jude says.
“What happened?” Katrina asks.
“Life crept in, shit happened.” Hannes touches his daughter’s hand.
Glaring at her husband, Tselane says, “You mean Jude happened.”
There’s a ripple of shock, and then Ben says, “We were all there. We needed to grow up and move on with our lives. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
“Oh, for God’s sakes, Ben, let’s not call a spade a kidney infection. It was Jude. It was Jude who couldn’t control himself. We were fine. We knew when to stop and how to control ourselves. If Jude had shown a modicum of restraint, if he’d just been honest – he didn’t need to make a big confession, could have said to any one of us, ‘I have a problem,’ and we could have fixed things, but no, he waited till it was so out of control we had to break up the party. All these years, I’ve been the baddie, fine, I’ll be the baddie, but let’s be honest about why I went bad.”
Jude tries to put his arm around Tselane but she pulls back. “My love, we had to make difficult choices. We’re making new ones. I’m sorry.”
“I know you’re sorry, one thing I know is that you’re sorry.”
They all stare at her, stunned. Who knew Tselane felt any of this? So unlike her, and yet, what she’s been through, someone should have called, written, checked up on her. For a moment, an endless, unbearable moment, they sit like that, trying not to look at her crying, rejecting her husband’s touch. She stares out at the passing landscape; black trees silhouetted by the breaking dawn, chirping birds whose names she’ll never understand, the ground below them vibrating and humming with life. Despite the endlessness of the bush, the clearness of the air, she feels claustrophobic. What is this? Her homeland, a land with which she feels no affinity.
A hand reaches out, gently touches her on the shoulder. “There are things none of us will ever understand, maybe it’s better that way, but it doesn’t diminish the love. Everything’s gonna change, for the worse and the better, but you’ll always be loved.”
In turn Tselane touches Lillie’s hand, kisses it, but keeps looking straight ahead at the horizon.
“After he has an episode, I turn on him, I don’t know why. As soon as Jude gets better, I get angry. I’m sorry, everyone.”
The sky is changing quite suddenly from grey to blue, the clouds becoming lilac, almost pink.
“Ice cream and chocolate sauce!” Simon leaps up in excitement. “I spotted it first.”
“Sit down, they’ll get a fright,” Themba whispers, pulling the boy down.
Slowly, right in front of their eyes, an elephant nonchalantly crosses the road, stuffing grass messily into its mouth. Behind it dawdles a baby. It stops and scrapes the heels of its front feet on the path. It’s like a Disney caricature. Not that it’s a small animal, not a bunny or a puppy, but everyone oohs and aahs as they would if it were a domestic pet. The mother walks up to a great male and the two entwine trunks. “They’re hugging,” Themba explains.
“Do they love one another?” Balthazar asks.
“Of course they love one another, they’re the mum and dad, they have to love one another otherwise they can’t make the baby,” Simon says.
“How do you know?” Balthazar asks.
“They’re my discovery, my ice cream and chocolate sauce. I’m right, they have the same feelings as us, don’t they, Themba?”
“Yes, more than you can imagine, little man. Just like your mother and father, this little elephant’s mother and father had a courtship, but they start having babies when they’re fourteen. And they hug like those two over there by crossing trunks. They have the same feelings as us – love, sadness. When one of them dies, the other visits the gravesite for many years. Sometimes we see them touching the skull with their trunk, maybe they’re wondering, Who was this? Nowadays, times are not good for the animals. Unstable …” A shadow of fear crosses Themba’s cheery face as he watches the elephants. “We have the problem of poachers, killing our elephants, our rhinos. Sometimes, young animals watch their mothers being shot. And the rhinos, they’re nearly finished. Times are so bad you’ll have to photograph them, otherwise just now they’ll all be dead when your children grow up.”
Hannes stares angrily at Themba. “Ours are safe.”
“Eish, we had a problem, Hannes. We can still have problems, same as everyone else.”
“Themba, nothing about us is the same as everyone else. There’s no farm in South Africa, in Africa, that’s as well protected as ours. Our rhinos are safe, we have a fucking army, we have okes wearing bullet-proof vests patrolling with semi-automatics twenty-four seven. We have all the ammo and info. We’re not like the others; we’re winning the war.”
Everyone looks shocked. “It’s so sophisticated?” Ben asks.
“Of course. It’s a huge business.”
“Dad,” Katrina says, “dis goed, you’re cool, your animals are safe.”
“Ja, I’m just saying, nobody can touch us.”
“So your elephant won’t lose its mother?” Balthazar asks tentatively. “Or your rhino?”
“Never!” Hannes says.
Tselane looks at the boys. They’re what? About the same age she was when she left the country, maybe a little older. In some ways sharper and in others … well, they look shocked that something could lose its mother. She hears Ben whisper to Hannes that perhaps they should change the subject. “Would Olivia protect them from the truth?” Hannes responds, and she smiles to herself. He’s still a militant.
“Many young elephants are traumatised and left to raise the young,” Themba says, “when their parents have been poached. The males in the herd become more violent, less stable. But these elephants here, boys, these elephants are safe. It’s true. We keep them safe on Hannes’s land.” He smiles and hits his friend on the back. “My friend Hannes keeps his land safe for the animals.”
A big elephant sits back on its knees as the others touch faces. The tenderness carries on for a few moments before the baby steps between them. In the morning mist the herd walks, slowly, without any apparent concern, towards the rapidly rising sun.
“Did you get pictures, Dad?”
“For school?”
“And for Mum, she would have loved the elephants.”
Tselane feels a sense of awe, at the elephants, the sunrise, the morning waking up around her. She thinks, Yes, Olivia would have loved the elephants.
The vehicle continues through the constant chatter of wildlife. The boys, encouraged now, are eager to spot the rest of the Big Five.
“There, straight ahead.” Lillie points to a herd of zebra.
“These Olivia should have seen.” Tselane nudges Ben. “They look like the couch in your bedroom.”
“Tselane,” Jude chides his wife.
She laughs. “It’s true. They look like couches, couches of endearment.”
Hannes laughs with her, relieved to see her humour restored.
The zebra stand together nibbling the hair on one another’s backs.
“They’re grooming one another,” Themba tells the group.
“There’s a chameleon, on the side of the tree, for my expedient boyfriend,” Hannes says, glancing at Zac.
Flat against the tree trunk, so close you could touch it, the creature looks prehistoric.
“You shit! I’m not expedient, I’m unpunctual. And I apologised.”
“Look at the chameleon, and don’t swear in front of other people’s children.”
Tselane bursts out laughing,. “Haaaaaannes, these are not your children, or my children, these are not the queen of fucking England’s children. These are Olivia I-swear-like-a-dame’s children. Boys, does your mum swear?”
Before either of the boys can respond, Ben says, “The deal is their mum is not supposed to swear at school functions.”
“But she still does, Dad,” Simon points out.
“We’ve tried a swearing jar, but you know Olivia, every time she says ‘shit’ she says ‘Oops, fuck I’m sorry, I’ve got no cash. Can I owe the jar?’ She promised her publishers she wouldn’t swear on air. That didn’t come to much. But she’s started trying, for the boys, what do you think, Si, Balth?”
“I don’t think she giveth a rat’th ath!” Balthazar says.
Even Katrina laughs.
“Balth, whatever Mum does, we’ve made a deal.”
Balthazar jabs Simon and they grin at each other. “Thorry, Dad, I’m awfully, fuuu—” Simon clamps his brother’s jaw shut. The boys fall about laughing. “Dad, Balthazar is awfully sorry.”
“Yes, he looks very sorry, doesn’t he? Now where did that chameleon get to?”
The tracker points to a sky speckled with black birds that look like they’ve been drawn by children. Except these are ominous, and real, and at the end of their wings, feathers stretch out like grasping fingers. The tracker and Themba chat for a few seconds in a language that Tselane doesn’t understand.
“There’s a kill nearby,” Hannes explains.
Themba makes a call on the walkie-talkie, and drives, following the tracker’s directions. It’s not far ahead, the magnificent carcass of a zebra. A group of birds dances around the tattered animal. Ripping back the hide, they poke away at its bloody insides. More birds keep coming, falling out of the sky like hang-gliders, swooping down, bigger ones spread their wings to fight off the younger ones. So many birds feeding off one carcass.
“Yuck, Dad,” the boys say in unison.
“Yes, thank heavens Mum’s not here.”
Two birds tug at the same piece of skin, trying to get at pieces of meat still attached to the hide.
“Pity, Zac, you could have used that as a rug in the castle, you need something at the foot of the stairs. It’s so austere,” Katrina remarks, her face deadpan.
The putrid, fleshy smell of meat fills the air.
Lillie flinches. “They’re not very appealing.”
Pierre holds her. “You don’t have to like everything. To us these are nasty birds, they’re raptors, they practise Cainism.”
“What’s Cainism?” Jude asks.
“It would have suited Pa,” Hannes laughs, looking at his brother. “Caine and Abel, it’s when the first-born chick kills its siblings to secure its own survival.”
The others are horrified.
“And, like, what do the parents do?” Lillie asks.
“It’s part of nature, achieves balance, they don’t have a problem.”
“Except with us it was reversed. I think Pa might have been relieved if you’d kicked me out the nest,” Hannes says.
Pierre laughs. “Ja, would’ve made it simpler for him to work his shit out. We confused it all for him.” The brothers laugh. Their laugh is foreign to Tselane; it’s the laughter of a shared upbringing, a shared heritage.
“Olivia’s mother would probably have sanctioned it. Perhaps most parents would approve,” Ben says. Then he turns to Zac. “Can I borrow your camera to get a shot for Olivia?”
“No!” Katrina pulls Zac’s hand down, then, embarrassed, realises what she’s done. Lillie quickly hands Ben her camera. Zac pulls his hand away from Katrina’s grasp. “Of course he can use my camera,” he says.
“It’s cool, my camera was here. He’s probably got the picture already,” soothes Lillie.
Hannes glares at Katrina.
“Sorry,” she says, “I thought Zac had probably set his shutter speed or something.”
“Please don’t worry, I’ve got the picture, thanks.”
Lillie smiles at Tselane, changing the subject. “I love the way you smell, I noticed it last night. What is it?”
“We all love the way Tselane smells,” Jude mumbles into her neck.
“She smells the same as she did in 1997,” Hannes says.
“Here” – like an apothecary Tselane pulls a glass phial out of a velvet pouch – “give me your hands, blondini.”
“No, I couldn’t, it’s your signature scent.”
“Nonsense, let’s see what it smells like on you.” Holding each of Lillie’s delicate wrists, Tselane pours a few drops into the palms of Lillie’s hands. “Rub the back of your neck, like this.”
Tselane does the same thing, and the air smells like her. There’s something intimate about two girls, not quite friends, sharing a fragrance.
“Kit-Kat, let me give you some?”
Katrina smiles. “Thanks, no. I’m allergic to perfume.” There’s nothing mean about the way she says it.
Tselane takes a deep breath and feels warmth she hasn’t felt for years. She catches Katrina’s eye and smiles at the young girl’s vulnerability. Looking round at everyone’s faces, touched by love, loss and time, she realises, with relief, that they’re finally safe. She’ll never know it was at this moment that Katrina realises she will fuck everything up.
BEN
When Katrina looks at you, you’re not sure if she’s looking at you or at someone more interesting behind you. Ben wants to check, but to do so would mean parting from her penetrating gaze. He consciously longs to think of his own beautiful wife, at this moment probably opening her green eyes amidst a mass of blonde hair, stretching and rearranging her long limbs. But he can’t disengage. All he can do is stare at the jet black eyes in front of him, naked, challenging.
Her look becomes familiar, not as Kit-Kat, the dimpled laughing child he remembers, but as a painting. If her hair was braided off her face. If her black eyebrows met and, instead of her usual punk goth clothing, she wore colour … She has the relentless black irises, the unconventional courage of spirit, the danger and the suffering. Katrina, he thinks, is like a contemporary Frida Kahlo. The antithesis of his beloved wife. He allows himself the unexpected indulgence of staring back at her defiance. She seems determined to make him uneasy, conventional. The businessman in the city, Rockefeller. He feels square. She and Zac should know what he used to get up to. Then he realises that they do. Annoyed, he thinks, “Fuck you, little girl, what are you playing at? Flaunting your father’s Diego Rivera lover.”
He hears his jaw click and thinks of the mouth-guard sitting unused at the bottom of his drawer back home. He grinds his jaw every night and is stressed every day; to wear it would be to concede to the reality.
There’s a bump in the road and the spell is broken. Katrina sneers. He’s relieved but feels a strange sense of loss.
They get back to the lodge slightly dishevelled, over-excited and more intimate than they were when they set off. An extravagant buffet table is set up under the dappled light of a baobab tree. An eager chef stands next to the waitresses, ready to take orders for hot food.
