Scheherazade and the Apple of All Evil
‘It’s been an exhausting week,’ said Griet, ‘and I’m talking only of my own life. Not to mention everything that’s going on in the country.’
‘Is Jans going to join us tonight?’ Gwen was wearing a long dress that would still be loose enough when she was nine months pregnant, even though she didn’t even have the suggestion of a stomach yet. ‘Or is he working too hard on the New South Africa?’
‘Politics are more important than parties, Gwen.’ Griet poured soda water into a wine glass for her friend. ‘But he promised to come by later.’
‘What does he say about all the changes?’
‘He says the world is experiencing a moment of hope. Like Camelot, or the Renaissance, or the Kennedy years in America. He says in a year or two we’ll look back nostalgically to this moment.’
Gwen shook her head and gazed at the bubbles in her soda water. ‘It’s all too good to keep going for long, isn’t it?’
Griet looked around, at the family and friends she had invited to her new flat tonight. She had taken the first step, she thought gratefully, away from the oven door. She didn’t have a stove, but she had bought herself a microwave. So small that even a dwarf couldn’t get his head into it. She didn’t have a bed to push under her mattress or bookcases for her books. But it could have been worse, as her father would have said. She could have had a bed without a mattress or a bookcase with no books.
‘And how was your D-Day?’ Gwen wanted to know.
‘Just as messy as the one in the Second World War. Napoleon against Churchill. My attorney versus my husband’s attorney – my ex-husband’s attorney. We will fight them in chambers! We will fight them in court! We will never give up! Or whatever it was that Churchill said.’
‘It’s one of the few things I haven’t experienced,’ said Gwen, sounding almost regretful for a moment. ‘Is it as bad as they say?’
‘Worse. It’s absurd. There you sit: you and the man you’ve lived with – and conceived three children with – for seven years. You sit in separate waiting rooms while a team of attorneys and advocates and advisors negotiate behind closed doors. And all I could think of the whole time were Churchill’s war speeches. Never before has so little been done by so many for so few.’
‘For so much money?’
‘You wait a whole day,’ Griet laughed, ‘clinging to your sense of humour like a castaway hangs on to a splinter of plank.’
‘But in the end you came to some sort of agreement?’
‘In the end our legal teams came to some sort of agreement. I felt that I no longer had a say in my own divorce. I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up somewhere else. Even Louise’s kitchen was cosy in comparison with that waiting room.’
Gwen stroked her stomach thoughtfully, her eyes on Klaus at the other end of the living room. For the first time since Griet had known her, she looked at home in her own body. The loose dress emphasised her broad hips and large breasts.
‘But it looks as though things are going better with you than they are with me?’
‘I don’t know how long the peace is going to last, Griet.’ Gwen sipped her soda water. ‘But everything seems fine right now. Klaus said he wanted to try again – before he knew about the baby.’
‘And when he heard the news?’
‘Well, even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t very well abscond seconds after declaring his everlasting love. I never thought I’d be grateful that Klaus is German! But you know what Germans are like: soppy about babies and pregnant women.’
‘I know,’ smiled Griet. ‘The Brothers Grimm even believed in happy endings. Are you going to be married?’
‘We’ll have to see. I don’t know, Griet, I’m probably too old or cynical, but I don’t want to plan ahead any more. At the moment I just take things day by day.’
She smiled at Griet and moved back to Klaus. He looked down at her, sliding an arm round her hips. Protectively. Possessively? Things might still work out for them, thought Griet. Whatever that meant these days.
‘I love your flat,’ Nella said from behind Griet. ‘It’s a vast improvement on Louise’s place.’
‘A park bench would be an improvement on Louise’s place, Nella. I’m so glad you came.’
Nella’s purple velvet frock and green velvet hat made her look like a peacock in a pen of doves. Griet thought she’d seen the hat ages ago in her mother’s wardrobe. It could also have belonged to one of her grandmothers.
‘I notice you don’t have any ashtrays in your new life. Are you going to stop smoking at last?’
‘No. Yes, of course I’ll give up sometime, but not yet. I left all my ashtrays in George’s house by accident.’
‘I’m never going to give up,’ declared Nella, drawing sensually on a long slim cheroot. ‘Who wants to grow old?’
‘I also said that when I was your age,’ sighed Griet. ‘You can use a saucer as an ashtray.’ She’d also left her kettle in her old home, and half her towels, and all her pillows. But she’d read somewhere long ago that people who sleep without pillows aren’t so prone to getting double chins. And she didn’t really need all those towels. And she could boil water in her microwave oven until she got a new kettle. Life was actually simpler than she’d reckoned.
‘And if I should grow old against my own better judgement, and get Alzheimer’s or just become senile, it’s better for my brain to smoke,’ said Nella confidently. ‘I read that in GQ. They did tests on old people and Alzheimer patients and found that smokers perform better – mentally – than non-smokers. And that the improvement was dramatic among Alzheimer sufferers. And the more they smoke, the better they perform.’
‘Terrific. So if I don’t die of lung cancer or a heart attack or any other condition attached to smoking – or cynicism or any other psychological condition – I can become a thinking senior? Is that what Gentlemen’s Quarterly claims, Nella?’
‘All I’m saying is that there are more arguments in favour of smoking than just being thin and decadent.’ Nella let the smoke curl from her nostrils in lazy spirals.
She’s so young, thought Griet, she didn’t have a single scar on her body or her heart yet.
Petra had just appeared in the doorway. She wore a close-fitting black dress with a plunging neckline, her mouth flashing, scarlet as a traffic light. Now we’ll see some action, thought Griet when she noticed Anton’s reaction to the red light. She wondered if he would tell her sister how erotic she looked when she brushed against tables and chairs. She wondered whether she should warn her sister that he was married to a friend.
‘I wonder what Ma would say about Marko’s partner,’ she said to her youngest sister. ‘Why does he always go for girls who look like eleven-year-old orphans?’
‘Well …’ Nella speculated through a cloud of smoke, ‘as a little boy he always brought stray dogs and injured birds home.’
‘Maybe it’s not so bad having a South African passport any more,’ Louise had said over the telephone earlier that evening, with more optimism in her voice than Griet had heard for months. The world really was experiencing a moment of hope if even her cynical friend could sound like this. ‘Or is that just wishful thinking?’
‘Does this mean you’re coming home?’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘But it makes it easier to cope with Andrew if I know I can come home. And we might even do our great African Safari in a few years, Griet. From Cape Town to Cairo – with South African passports!’
Griet laughed. As long as they’d known each other, they’d dreamt of travelling the length of Africa one day, getting to know their own continent. And it was the first time in months that Louise had referred to her husband by name, she realised.
‘And what news from the Far East?’ asked Griet.
‘I’m still in lust.’ Louise’s sigh fell heavily between them and subsided slowly into silence. ‘Even though he’s bald and he has a paunch. I’m everything now that I never wanted to be, you know. Overweight, over thirty and unhappily married – with sexual fantasies about a randy middle-aged Israeli!’
‘Welcome to reality, as you told me long ago, my dearest friend!’
‘Oh yes, I bumped into Adam in the pub round the corner.’ Be still, my heart, thought Griet. ‘He couldn’t stop talking about you. We spoke in Afrikaans, otherwise the girl with him would have gone green with envy. I don’t know what you did to him but he sounds bewitched.’
‘What did the girl look like?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes. I can take it. No. Don’t tell me. I can guess. Very young, very pretty and very thin.’
‘And very stupid,’ Louise added. ‘He said he’d never met such an exciting woman with such a strong personality as you.’
‘Isn’t that what they always say? And the next day you wake up alone again.’
‘Now you sound almost as cynical as I am, Gretel.’ Louise’s voice sounded more sad than cynical.
Marko and his latest orphanage find had started to dance, Griet noticed. And Anton and Petra had obviously decided it didn’t matter that they didn’t know each other from Adam. Griet’s eyes swayed with Anton’s hands on her sister’s hips. No, decided Griet, Petra didn’t need a warning. Petra had probably been born with more street sense than her sister would ever achieve.
Then she became aware of Sandra, standing beside her silently. Sandra was a small woman, even smaller than her brother’s girlfriend, with the sort of helpless air that instantly transformed Griet into an efficient class captain.
‘How about a drink? Have you had something to eat?’
‘More than enough, thanks,’ answered Sandra in her quiet voice.
Griet couldn’t take her eyes off her sister’s hips which were swaying ever more voluptuously under Anton’s hands. She didn’t know what to say to Sandra.
‘Just look at my husband! Flirting again!’ said Sandra like an indulgent mother of a mischievous child.
‘Just look at my sister. Flirting again,’ murmured Griet, like the awkward older sister she was.
‘Just as long as he enjoys the evening,’ said Sandra. ‘He’s working himself to death these days.’
‘Well, it isn’t as though you’re exactly sitting at home loafing either, Sandra.’
‘No, some days the children drive me up the wall,’ she admitted with a radiant smile. She looked like Walt Disney’s Snow White, gleaming black hair, rosy cheeks and baby-white skin. As though a singing dwarf would peep out from behind her skirt any moment, Griet always thought. ‘It’s such a pleasure to leave them with my mother sometimes and have a night out in town. You know how Anton loves a party. I enjoy just watching him enjoy himself!’
Could she really be that naïve? Or was she simply the only kind of woman who’d always be happily married? She would either never know her husband was unfaithful, thought Griet, or never admit that she knew.
What if her own name had been Mary, thought Griet, not for the first time. Her life would undoubtedly have been different. She and her Joseph would probably still be together. Men just love rescuing women from difficulties, as Louise liked to say, and keeping the grateful woman in lifelong bondage. Mary couldn’t very well leave Joseph, could she? Just as Snow White couldn’t leave her prince. You can’t walk away from a man who has literally rescued you from your own coffin.
It was the Gretels of the world who struggled with relationships, the girls who shoved the witch into the oven and rescued their brothers. It was they who made their wretched husbands impotent. If they ever found husbands.
If they ever wanted husbands.
Griet had been wondering about Hansel and Gretel for years. And the longer she thought about it, she had to admit, like Simonides, the further she apparently was from any answer.
‘It’s your turn,’ said Marko, pulling her on to the patch, of living room floor where he was dancing. ‘Do you remember teaching me how to slow dance?’
‘I remember, and you thought I was crazy.’
‘Well, I was still at school, Griet. What did you expect?’
‘And you grew up to be the Fred Astaire of Cape Town.’
‘Not for long. I’m off to Namibia next week.’ He swung her under his arms before she could catch her breath and say something. ‘I’m going to work for a foreign news agency.’
‘To get away from the army?’ she gasped.
‘That’s one of the reasons. But it’s also an exciting place to be now. A new country.’
‘But exciting things are happening here too …’
‘They’ve got much further in Namibia. I don’t want to hide from the army for another five years, Griet. I’ve had a gutful of hiding.’ He twirled her under his arm again. ‘I could already have a Namibian passport by then.’
She had to force herself to dance on. From early on she’d known Tienie would fly away as soon as she got the chance. And Petra had always been too ambitious to stay in one place. But Marko was her only brother.
‘It’s just so … so sudden.’ Oh, Hansel, Hansel, she thought, I’d push a witch into the oven for you. Even though she liked witches. ‘Next week? Everything’s happening too quickly.’
She’d lost too much. It was as though every man she loved disappeared from her life. Her grandfathers, her husband, her stepsons, her son … and now her brother.
All except the father she couldn’t talk to.
It felt as though she was cursed to live with women for ever. And men she couldn’t talk to. And lovers who flapped their wings and flew away. And babies who only existed in her womb. And stories that only existed in her mind.
She tore herself out of her brother’s arms and fled to the kitchen to get her emotions under control. She switched the microwave oven on because she didn’t know what else to do; waited while the platter of snacks warmed up. She’d wrapped the oysters in bacon herself that morning, just as her mother always used to do for parties. And she’d actually enjoyed doing it.
It gradually came to her attention that she could hear a cricket chirping. It couldn’t be, she thought incredulously. From cockroaches to crickets. Then she began to shake with silent laughter.
‘And what’s this standing in front of the oven laughing?’
Jans was in the kitchen door. He had his office clothes on, as usual, but he’d taken his jacket off and his tie hung over one shoulder. His eyes looked tired behind his spectacles. He was chewing an apple.
‘I nearly forgot about you!’ She battled to get her laughter under control.
‘Better late than never,’ he said apologetically. ‘Like the so-called New South Africa.’
‘No, I mean I nearly forgot that you’re one of the few men who …’ The microwave oven pinged behind her and she turned to open the door. ‘You’ve stood by me.’
‘That smells heavenly.’
He sounded embarrassed, she realised as she turned back to him with the platter in her hands.
‘They come from heaven. My mother calls them angels on horseback.’
‘Tastes like heaven,’ said Jans, popping one of the oyster-angels into his mouth. ‘Did you make them?’
‘Don’t look so surprised.’ Griet gave him the platter. ‘Have another one.’
‘Have a bite,’ he said, giving her his half-eaten apple.
She looked at the apple. Golden Delicious. Sun gold on the outside, winter white inside.
‘Do you know how much trouble the apple has already caused?’
‘Well, there was the Apple of Eternal Youth in Scandinavian mythology,’ said Jans, putting a second oyster into his mouth. ‘The gods ate it to stay young. And there were various apples in Greek mythology. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides guarded by an eternally wakeful dragon with a hundred heads; the apples of Hippomenes …’
Griet laughed delightedly and took a bite of the apple. It was sweeter than she’d expected. Jans’s eyes didn’t look so tired any more.
‘Now I remember,’ she said. ‘There was a good apple in the Arabian Nights too, one that could cure all ailments …’
‘And of course there was the apple that unlocked the mysteries of gravity.’
‘Newton’s apple?’ Griet’s toes were tingling. That was always the first sign. ‘I clean forgot about that. Maybe because I don’t always believe in gravity.’
He’d always stood by her. Through thick and thin. Through divorce and death.
‘Why have you never left me in the lurch, Jans?’ The tingling was creeping up her legs and her stomach felt hollow. The second sign. ‘Is there something wrong with you?’
‘You make me laugh.’
Clever Griet makes the prince laugh! Her head was lighter than air. The third sign. She rose up, regally, grabbing at Jans below her. She rubbed his chin, the stubble like sandpaper under her fingers, her feet just clearing the floor. Then something happened that was so strange it could only have happened in a fairy tale. She saw his feet lift off the ground.
‘Do you believe in happy endings?’
‘No.’ He looked confused by the unexpected attention. She could swear she felt the warmth of a blush on the cheek under her hand. He kissed her on the forehead. ‘But you can always hope.’
He looked around nervously, as though he couldn’t believe he was flying. Then his lips slid down to her ear.
‘Am I imagining things,’ he asked cautiously, ‘or do I hear a cricket chirping?’