Martin Steyn
Kira
One of South Africa’s eleven official languages, Afrikaans is a relatively young one, a descendant of the Dutch spoken there by colonizing settlers and not recognized as a distinct language by the South African government until 1925. There is a long tradition of horror fiction and ghost stories in Afrikaans, dating back to the éminence grise of Afrikaans letters, poet C. J. Langenhoven (1873-1932), who published literary ghost stories, the best of which were collected in a 2015 volume in Afrikaans but await an English translation. Contemporary Afrikaans horror authors include François Bloemhof and Jaco Jacobs, both primarily writers for young readers, but whose horror stories for adults appeared in the 2016 anthology Skadustemme [Shadow Voices], where they were featured along with our next story, Martin Steyn’s ‘Kira’. Though predominantly an author of crime novels, one of which, Dark Traces, has appeared in English, Steyn grew up reading Stephen King and occasionally publishes a tale in the genres of horror or the supernatural, like this one, in which a man returns to his childhood home, where he experiences an otherworldly encounter.
Tamason.
I push the cabin’s door open, Knysna Lake purling softly behind me. The stagnant odor hits me like an accusation. The dust must be at least two centimeters thick and I notice more than one thing scurrying.
I’m happy to be back. I’ve always seen Tamason as ‘back’ and the apartment in Stellenbosch as ‘away’, although I spend my days in that student town. Here I always feel whole again.
That’s why I’ve fled here.
I inherited Tamason from my parents. From the beginning there was a bond between me and the cabin; I was the one who gave it its name when I was little. We were sitting on the porch and my mom pointed out the sunset to me. When those red fingers, a woman’s fingers without any doubt, drew silky stripes through the clouds, I said one word: ‘Tamason’. What I tried to say was ‘tomato sun’, but at that stage, tomato was still either ‘mato’ or ‘tama’, depending on the sentence or my mood. And so was my beloved house christened.
It takes me the rest of the afternoon to make the house reasonably clean, ‘every nook and cranny’, as my mom was so fond of saying. In the process I discover all kinds of filthy creatures that had come to breed and mutate happily in mankind’s absence, and everything gets summarily bugsprayed and massacred; I have no conscience when it comes to insects.
With the dust and corpses cleared away and my airways sneezed clean, I go and sit with a can of Castle on the porch swing. I look out over the water. The ripples look so calm, but the surface is a dark veil.
I start up a fire and grill a whole package of sausage. By the time it’s ready there are three more empty beer cans beside the barbecue. I eat half of the sausage along with a roll and go sit down again on the swing, my second-to-last Castle in my hand.
I become conscious of hands. Soft hands, women’s hands, touching my forehead carefully. I open my eyes, confused and disoriented and startled.
But she’s already five steps away. Her eyes are large and dark like the lake, her cheeks dull white and smooth in the light of the gas lamp, her mouth slightly open. Dark hair hangs down to her shoulders. She has a loose white dress on, something that folds over her body almost like a sheet, and her bare feet are close together. She holds her hands in front of her.
I open my mouth to say something, but she is already gone.
Just gone. Like a drop of rain on the lake.
I rub my face and wonder if I’m awake. I still feel her cold fingertips against my skin.
I stand up and step on my empty beer can beside the swing, lose my balance and topple headlong.
It’s one way of making sure you’re awake. I remain lying on the wooden porch and wonder about her. Was she real? Or was it just a dream?
*
The morning sun is shining on the lake when I open the door. I walk into the mineral-rich water, swim out towards the depths and then back to shore. There are a lot of boats on the lake, some with sails, like paper flowers floating in a myriad of colors on the brownish water, others without sails but with powerful engines that cut through the silence. The lake feeds the village, and in a way the village feeds the lake.
Really in more than one way.
After breakfast I grab my guitar and go sit on the swing. It’s somewhere during ‘Polly’ when I feel the clammy thing against my hip, where the T-shirt must have slid up. At first I’m startled, but then I see the animal who has pressed his muzzle against me, laughing and excited, low on his forepaws, rear end in the air and tail wagging.
I can’t resist the big golden retriever. I set the guitar down and sink onto my hands and knees, a mimic of the dog’s posture. His mouth gives a bigger laugh and he shuffles closer. I slap on the plank, and when he jumps I push him to the left. He pulls back and comes again. I turn him away. So we try to outwit each other until he finally jumps around and licks my face. I push his head away but can’t stop him from laughing.
When I finally stand up, I look around but don’t see anyone. There’s no collar on the dog’s neck, but his fur is clean and it’s obvious that he’s well cared for.
‘Where’s your owner?’
He just laughs and sinks down again on his forepaws.
After lunch – we shared a can of Vienna sausages, mine with mustard, his without – I take him out onto the sand, in the hope that he’ll head home. But he just sits and looks at me. He pays no heed to my encouragement. He follows me left and right along the lake. I try to chase him off, but he plays dumb and makes a game of it.
Finally I give up and walk back towards Tamason. I write my shadow’s description and my address on a sheet of paper and walk towards the café. The dog is well trained too, because he doesn’t go in with me.
Old Tolla is behind the counter and he smiles when he sees me. ‘Hey, Tommie! Man, it’s been a long time since I saw you last. How’s it going?’
‘Good, thanks.’ Does it count as a lie if you don’t think about the answer? ‘And you?’
‘Young man, if I complain, the wife says it’s my own fault for wanting to sit and read the newspaper.’ He holds up his hands and grins.
I used to come and buy sweets from Tolla when I was waist-high. He always let me have them at a discount. But old age has crept up on him; the gray has completely overtaken his lush forest of hair, the cracks around his eyes and the corners of his mouth are deeper and folds have appeared in the skin of his neck. Yet the lines on my forehead are deeper too.
‘Are your parents here too?’
‘No, they passed away.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Yes, it’s been almost two years.’
‘So long?’
I nod. ‘My mom had a stroke and two months later my father’s heart went out. They could never make it without each other.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, man.’
‘Thanks. Have you seen that dog before?’ I motion to where the dog is sitting with its rear against the window.
‘No. I thought it was yours.’
‘No. He came sniffing around at Tamason. We played a little and ate and now he doesn’t want to go home.’
Tolla laughed. ‘That’s what happens when you feed a dog.’
‘Well, would you maybe hang this up somewhere?’ I give him the paper.
‘Sure thing.’
In the early evening I start another fire and meanwhile open a package of chips and a Castle. Sebastian comes to sit beside me – I’ve decided to give him a name, because how are we supposed to have a relationship if I think of him as The Dog? – and we watch the flames.
Sebastian snatches a couple of chips out of my hand when I make the mistake of holding it too low. After that he wants more and more. But he’s not getting any beer. I found an old margarine tub in one of the kitchen cupboards and filled it with water.
After the meal, I’m back on the swing. Sebastian comes to lie at my feet, buries his muzzle between his paws, closes his eyes and gives a contented sigh.
I look towards the lake. When the water is as still as it is this evening and it’s a new moon, a person can almost forget it’s there. But of course it’s there.
Just like Deloris Mouton.
It’s hard to run away from yourself.
Deloris Mouton, with her tidy hair and razor-sharp eyes. The devil in a skirt. Could I still save my soul, or had the transaction already gone through?
Before the faculty party she was Professor Mouton, the head of the Afrikaans-Dutch Department. And I was just a lecturer, new to the university. But that evening we really talked for the first time. When I’d gone outside to get some air. What a cliché. I thought it was a coincidence but of course she’d followed me.
As people do at such times, we shared our interests and quickly discovered that we both had a predilection for Romantic poetry. And it’s hard not to enjoy the attention of a beautiful woman. The light touching started that evening.
It took her less than two weeks to seduce me. I was a willing victim. Her age didn’t bother me; she was attractive, intelligent, self-confident. Available. And she could open doors at the university.
Then I found out she was married. The ring she always so deftly hid when we ran into each other on campus was actually not as great a shock as who had given it to her. The dean of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy.
Yet I allowed her to convince me not to break off the relationship. And thus to weave me into her web.
And here I sit in Knysna, and it’s already been a year that we’ve been going on like this.
I wake up with a start. Sebastian is barking. I stand up and walk carefully down the stairs. I had left the sliding door open a little in case he needed to go out. That was obviously not such a great idea.
Sebastian stands a little way back from the sliding door and growls, his body tense.
I look but don’t see anything.
He walks a couple of steps closer to the door, barks, and trots towards me.
Whoever or whatever was there isn’t there anymore.
I can’t get back to sleep. I push the sheet off, pull it up, roll on my side, turn the pillow over, kick the sheet off my feet . . . give up, lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.
It’s just before three.
I get up and creep down the stairs, over the tiles, and out the sliding door. The night air is delicious on my skin; I’m wearing only a pair of pajama pants.
I walk over the rough sand to the water. In the early morning hours it’s just a large dark pool, a mysterious, opaque mass. A lake is different from the sea. There isn’t the constant energy of the surf breaking on the shore, it’s like something that breathes.
That waits.
When we were here ten years ago over the December holidays, a little girl drowned. Her name was Samantha and she was six. It was a particularly warm day and I recall how her mother’s screams cut through the air, right through the laughter and buzz of vacation. I remember that little body on the sand. She was wearing a neon pink bikini. She lay there so still, her eyes half open.
And beside her was the lake.
The lake gives life and takes life. The lake feeds the village and the village feeds the lake.
But why a six-year-old child?
Goosebumps break out on my upper body and I fold my arms.
I become conscious of something to my left. She’s standing there like a statue, looking out over the water. She has the same white dress on.
At first I just stare and then begin to step closer, slowly, like in a dream. ‘Excuse me?’
She doesn’t answer. It’s as if she’s not aware of me.
I look at the dark hair that covers her shoulders, the roundness of her cheek, and I want to reach out and touch her.
She turns and looks at me. Her eyes are dark and unfathomable. I can’t look away. She begins to hum a little tune, soft and sweet, takes my hand and starts to dance with me. Slowly and dreamily we turn, her fingers cool. Beside us the lake murmurs. I drown in her eyes.
I feel her lips against my collarbone, cool and soft. Her mouth moves along my neck and I close my eyes. I put my hands on her hips and lose myself in her touch.
She takes a step back.
I open my eyes, reach for her. ‘Wait. Don’t go.’
She just looks at me.
‘Who are you?’
She takes my hand and turns around. I follow her over the sand, alongside the lake. I don’t care where she’s leading me. I’m only aware of her fingers against mine.
She stops at the old hanging tree with the long misformed branches that touch the water. She turns around and I raise my hand to touch her cheek. I can’t stop looking into her dark eyes. There’s a heartache in there. I want to take it away.
‘What’s your name?’ I whisper.
She holds her index finger against my lips, comes closer and presses her mouth against mine. Her lips are cool. Her mouth is cold. I taste the taste of the lake and then water, in my mouth, in my throat, in my lungs
(kira)
and I cough, bring the water up, and pant.
I look around, but she’s just gone.
I’m awakened by someone licking my ear. I open my eyes and see it’s Sebastian.
‘Oh, no, man.’ I push his head away.
And remember last night. Or did I dream it? I imagine the mineral taste of the lake in my mouth and feel even more confused.
Sebastian sits and looks at me with his head at an angle.
‘Yeah, I’m going crazy.’
I shake my head and stand up. I go wash my face in the bathroom and look at my eyes.
And then at my neck.
At the red mark where she sucked on me.
I touch the mark gingerly.
It wasn’t a dream.
I’m still smiling as I wash the breakfast dishes. My hands feel like they’re charged with electricity. I can’t wait to see her again.
The last time I felt like this was at university, when I met my first love. Mariska, a shy beauty with bright eyes, round cheeks and light brown hair that never wanted to stay behind her ears. It was she who taught me to appreciate Romantic poetry, to see the deeper beauty in it. In the afternoon we lay in bed and talked and laughed and drank. We read poems aloud to each other, discussed the words and emotions and fought over what the poet had meant. I traced her form with my finger
never before have i painted more beautifully than last night
i painted your whole back full of pictures
frolicking tangerines, guitars, and coins
We walked to class across the colored leaves and threw the leaves at each other on the way back. We stared out the window at the rain and wrote messages in the steam. Her name was the prettiest word I knew,
her figure is my coolness in the day
my brazier filled with red-hot coal in the night
We drank so much green tea that we couldn’t stop giggling. We climbed under the covers with a bottle of red wine and talked about profound things. We forgot time and words and everything but each other. But
our love died with the dawn
and we buried it, pale and mute
tender grass and fragrant spring soil
cover it, unadorned by wreath and flower
And then came Deloris Mouton, not a second love, but a second-rate love, false, a trap, a fraud, a waste, like Langenhoven’s moth . . . will the end of it be my ashes?
The long weekend is almost over.
You can run, but you always catch up to yourself.
The day doesn’t want to end. Sebastian and I play on the sand and cool off in the lake. We eat and I play listlessly on my guitar. My thoughts are already on tonight, waiting anxiously for time to catch up.
After dinner I lie down on the bed in a T-shirt and jeans. I try to read but I keep having to flip back to find out what happened. A little after eleven Sebastian starts barking. I walk down the stairs to where Sebastian stands stiff-backed and growling.
She’s standing outside, on the sand in front of the porch, barefoot in her white dress.
Sebastian growls again. I press my hand against his chest and hold him back while I slip out the opening in the sliding door. He forces his way towards me and I struggle to get the door closed. He stands up against the glass and barks.
I turn around.
She’s still standing there. Her hair rises and falls in the wind. Her dress makes little waves over her body.
She takes a step back. Her eyes are large and haggard. She takes another step away from me.
‘Don’t be afraid.’ She looks different tonight, so defenseless that I just want to put my arms around her. I want to feel her head against my shoulder and tell her that nothing else matters.
Slowly I go closer.
She turns around and runs.
I run after her. The sand shifts and grinds under my feet. I don’t try to catch up with her. I know where she’s going.
She’s standing beside the old hanging tree. She’s looking out over the dark water.
I grab her by the hair and turn her towards me. Her eyes are wet. I kiss the tears off her cheeks. It tastes like the lake.
(kira)
She turns around and I grasp her hand. She looks over her shoulder, her eyes large and sorrowful, and pulls her fingers slowly out from between mine.
Her feet are in the lake and the water foams against her ankles. She looks at it sadly and takes a step back.
‘Don’t go.’
The water bubbles hungrily around her legs, oozes into the material of the dress and sucks it tight against her skin.
‘Stay with me.’
I can see she wants to, but she turns around and walks deeper into the lake. The water swirls around her waist. The white fabric clings to her body as if the lake is greedy to have her. The water spits up against the ends of her hair.
I walk after her. It’s as if the water is holding me back. I use my hands and force my way ahead.
She looks around and her eyes beg me to go back. But I’m almost to her. She disappears under the water, as if something has grabbed her ankles and pulled her under.
I dive after her, search with my hands, but grab only water, cold and heavy. I run out of breath. I have to swim to the surface, but then I dive again and keep searching. I don’t even know which side the shore is on anymore.
And then my fingers touch something. Material. I grab it, clutch it tightly. It’s her. I get hold of her arm and pull, but she won’t come to the surface. It’s the lake. The lake doesn’t want to let her go. My lungs burn, but I clutch her wrist firmly because if I let her go I’ll never get her back again. My fingers hurt and at the same time start to go numb from the cold. The lake is too strong. I can’t . . . Her arm slips between my fingers and I scream my last bit of oxygen away.
Something pulls me under. I flail my arms, but it has no effect. A weight presses against my chest. Panic takes over. I swallow water, the rich mineral taste of the lake
(kira)
see only black around me. My arms are too heavy and tired to flail. The burning in my lungs is far away. I just sink, slowly, down, down, down into the cold.
Pain cuts deep into my arm and something pulls me up. My head breaks through the surface and I pant and cough and choke. It takes a while for me to breathe normally again. And then I see the grayish object beside me. I see the teeth and the forepaws treading water.
Not an object. Sebastian. I grin back at him.
Around us the dark water is still.
I stand on the sand and watch the sun come up over the lake. The rays can’t penetrate its surface. The lake doesn’t share her secrets easily.
Sebastian licks my fingers.
I smile and rub his head. ‘Come on. You get a special breakfast today.’
I still don’t know how Sebastian got out the sliding door last night. I don’t think I had closed it all the way, but the space was too narrow for him to fit through.
Sebastian sits and watches me while I grill boerewors in a pan. I set his portion down in front of him and he devours it like it’s the first time I’ve ever fed him.
While I tidy up a little, he jumps up, barks once and wags his tail. He looks towards the sliding door.
A little girl runs up to the door and starts to smile. ‘Nemo!’ Sebastian runs towards her and licks her face. She giggles and throws her arms around him.
A man appears behind her. He knocks on the sliding door.
He tells me how they’ve looked for Nemo everywhere and how many tears they’ve cried over him the past couple days. The thing that really strikes me is when I hear how far Sebastian came to find me.
I kneel down and rub his head for the last time. ‘So, Nemo, then.’ I smile and whisper in his ear: ‘Thanks.’
I stand on the porch and watch them go. Sebastian looks back once and barks. Even if his teeth marks hadn’t left scars on my left arm, I wouldn’t ever forget him.
He presses his muzzle against the little girl to steer her farther from the water’s edge.
I close the door to Tamason, the soft purling of the lake behind me. It’s time to go back to Stellenbosch, to tell Deloris Mouton that it’s over. And if that derails my career at Stellenbosch University, there are always other schools.
I walk across the sand to where the water begins. The lake lies stretched out before me, shiny but opaque. I squat down, cup my hands and scoop some water. I suck it into my mouth, close my eyes, and I remember her
(kira)
fingers, light against my forehead that first evening, her
(kira)
mouth, cool against my neck, her
(kira)
cheek, soft and wet against my lips.
I let the last of the water drip back into the lake, stand up, and walk to the car.
Translated from the Afrikaans by James D. Jenkins
Author’s Note: The poetic excerpts are taken from the following poems in Die Mooiste Afrikaanse Liefdesgedigte, compiled by Fanie Oliver: Jeanne Goosen, ‘Nog nooit het ek mooier geskilder’, Rosa Keet, ‘My pols sing ’n minnelied’, and Elisabeth Eybers, ‘Eerste liefde’.