THE DEATH OF MARIKA’S father is reported on the front page of the Daily Dispatch. The headline, SOWETO HAS COME TO KLIPDORP, is a comment from Mevrou Pienaar, the café tannie at the Sonskyn Kafee.
The paper rumours that Marika’s father, Willem Vink, may have been involved in illicit shebeen trading in Salem but Sergeant Verster, of the Klipdorp police, defends him: Ou Willem Vink was a deacon in the kerk. There is no way that he would stoop to such shady dealings.
Sergeant Verster goes on: I give you my word that no stone will be left unturned in our efforts to hunt down his killers.
My heart skips a beat. I wonder if I can be jailed for watching a murder. O Jesus, don’t let Sergeant Verster find my bicycle and come after me.
Across the road the curtains stay drawn. I wonder if Marika is sad her father is dead even though he beat her and jerked off over the Scope.
At school Marika’s desk is empty. Meneer de Beer is writing on the blackboard. There are whispers that her father went to the township to fuck a kaffir girl.
– If I had a shotgun in Salem, I would shoot my way out, Clint Eastwood style, tunes Joost.
– We should have shot all the kaffirs long ago, jus’ laaik the ’Mericans shot the Indians to hell ’n’ gone, larks a wiry boy they call Biltong.
– Then there’d be no Soweto, or Salem, laughs Joost.
– And no gold, or roads, or Johannesburg, if you think of it, says Meneer de Beer.
The boys are rattled to find he has heard every word. They shift in their desks, ashamed.
Meneer de Beer hands out scalpels. We have to slit the foil to free the blades.
– Jus’ laaik opening a rubber, jokes Joost, recovering his bravado.
Then Meneer de Beer tells us to pick a rabbit from the box.
Joost picks white.
– So the blood stands out, he chirps.
– Work in twos, commands Meneer de Beer. One to hold the rabbit down and one to slice through the windpipe.
Rabbits are yanked out of the box by their ears, feet clawing the air.
I am with a girl called Talia. She too has picked out a white rabbit, with red eyes. When Marsden and I were small, my mother would come into the room on the first of the month, saying: white rabbits, white rabbits. She has not done it for a long time. Not since my father said: you boys are becoming too old to waltz into the bathroom when your mother is naked.
Talia scratches the rabbit behind its ears.
– Wonder if he has a name? she says, to herself rather than me.
I can tell there is no way she is on the verge of slicing him open. So it is up to me, the boy. I have tugged heads off pigeons, seen blood squirt from a man’s head and the bone of my finger peep through my skin. But, at the thought of slitting through the beautiful white fur, nausea waves through me.
I put up my hand.
– Douglas?
– I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t cut the rabbit.
– What’s that you said?
– I can’t kill the rabbit.
– You can’t kill an animal, yet you eat meat?
– I’m sorry, sir.
– Either you kill the rabbit, or you bend.
I hang my head.
– Look boy, I’m being cruel to be kind. In South Africa you don’t have the freedom to be a moffie pacifist. Maybe overseas, where they don’t care if you wear an earring or smoke dagga, but this is South Africa and we are at war. If you won’t kill a rabbit at school, how will you kill a Cuban on the border? Hey? And if you don’t pull the trigger, it’s not just your life but the life of your fellow soldiers you risk.
– Moffie, I hear Joost whisper. You won’t shoot but you’d suck McEwan’s cock?
How Joost has jumped from rabbits to cock escapes me.
– Bend then.
Meneer de Beer swings down his cane.
– Now, will you kill the rabbit or shall I go on?
Though I feel sick and know that Marika would be ashamed of me, I pick up the scalpel.
I tilt the rabbit’s head back by the ears, then slice into his windpipe. Blood seeps through his fur. His eyes glare and his hind legs jigger. I hold him down, until a shudder ripples under his skin and the lustre fades out of his eyes. Then I slit the stomach and the smoking guts slither out.
In Sea Point, the stitching on my amber-eyed, chewy-eared panda comes undone and the spongy stuffing tumbles out. My mother jams the sponge back in and sews it up again.
The classroom spins and I hear Talia scream across a misty beach before my head hits the sand.
Through flickering eyelids I see Meneer de Beer’s eyeballs warping behind the lenses of his glasses. Red deltas in the whites of his eyes.
– You okay, Douglas?
I nod. He gives me a notched beaker of cold water.
After school, I walk along Delarey to the Shell.
Moses jumps up from his beer crate when he catches sight of me.
– I am happy to see you, Douglas. Marika’s father was looking for you and there was fire in his eyes. He wanted to know where you had gone with his girl. I would not tell him. He cocked his shotgun. So I told him you had gone to Salem. I have been worried for you.
– He’s dead.
– I heard it on the radio.
– I saw him die.
– Au au, Douglas.
– I’m glad he’s dead.
– That is a hard thing to say.
– But how can you forgive a man who taught his daughter to hate blacks?
Moses stands there, wiping sump oil from his hands with a shammy.
– Maybe because he was a poor teacher, he smiles.