Everything in the doctor’s waiting room looked old and dilapidated. The orange plastic chairs, the magazines with curled-up covers, the green carpet which in some places was as bald as the lawn in a public park. Even the Christmas cards on the reception desk looked as if they had been received ages ago, to be displayed just before Christmas each year.
On the dirty-white wall opposite me hung two framed prints of Cape Dutch gabled houses and a poster of a chimpanzee on a lavatory. He wore a shirt and tie, and trousers pulled down over his hairy legs. His sad brown eyes reminded me of the Portuguese café owner in Black River. Theheart is a lonely hunter.
I picked up the previous day’s newspaper from the magazine table because I was too ashamed to look at the other people in the waiting room. (Surely they must all be aware of what Dalena was at this very moment asking the doctor behind the closed door of his consulting room.) I paged through the newspaper, determined to find something on which I could concentrate, even if it was only a photograph. But each picture changed into Dalena’s face, Dalena looking at me as she’d never looked at me before. Just suppose …
I had known her for almost a year. I knew every expression on her face, from that impossibly wide smile when she was excited to the yellowy-green sheen in her eyes when she was irritated, but I had seen her scared only twice. That day, next to the swimming pool, when she had told us about the way things sometimes turned dark, I hadn’t understood what she was talking about. Last week in our hostel room, I’d known what she meant.
‘It’s time you saw a doctor,’ I’d decided when it eventually penetrated that my brave roommate didn’t have the courage to do it on her own. ‘I’ll go to Pretoria with you next week.’
She looked up from the letter she was writing. Her eyes brimmed with so much gratitude that I looked away guiltily.
‘Would you?’
What else could I do? I knew she would refuse to see a doctor in Black River or any neighbouring town. And I couldn’t run away again.
‘Yes. I’ve already told my mother that I want to go and buy Christmas presents as soon as the holiday starts.’
‘Christmas presents?’
‘Well, if you can think of a better excuse … We can go by train and stay over with those pals of Pierre’s. I’ll phone them tomorrow.’
‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’
Her smile opened like a fan. But in the past month her eyes had always been more grey than green, as if the marbles had been smudged by a sweaty hand.
Below our bedroom window I could smell the shrub that had made me want to cry that first evening in the hostel. Moonflowers, Pa had said, because they spray their scent on the moon at night. Beware of an attorney with the soul of a poet, Ma always warned, but Pa thought that a poet with the soul of an attorney would be even more dangerous.
Just suppose, I wondered, just suppose …
And then she asked it.
‘Just suppose …’ It sounded as if she were forcing the words through barbed wire in her throat. ‘Just suppose I’m pregnant?’
I looked so dismayed that she burst out laughing and quickly, in a high, bright voice, started speaking about something else.
The Directorate of Publications had released the latest list of undesirable publications, I read in the newspaper in the waiting room. The list included the following books: Manual do Guerrilheiro Urbano by Marighella; Group Sex by Dean McCoy; Some Thoughts on Chairman Mao by Thuso Mofokeng; Gay News, Nos 97 and 80 … While I read and reread the titles, the door of the doctor’s consulting room opened, slowly and creakily as in a horror movie. Dalena stood there looking at me. Expressionless.
I couldn’t get out of the waiting room fast enough. I dropped the open newspaper on the orange chair and rushed after her without giving the other patients a glance. In the lift she stared intently at the flashing red lights above the door, as if we were two strangers who happened to be caught in this confined space, while I waited for her to say something. It was only when we were outside and walking in the direction of Paul Kruger’s statue on Church Square that I could bear it no longer: ‘What did the doctor say, Dalena?’
‘I’ve conceived.’ The strange word in her mouth startled me more than its meaning. No one except our pretty biology teacher ever used words like ‘conception’ and ‘menstruation’ and all the rest. ‘About fifteen weeks gone.’
‘What now?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something.’ She walked as if she were scared of missing an important appointment. It wasn’t easy because the pavements were so crowded that she had to push people out of her way to pass them.
‘Have you discussed it with anyone?’
‘What?’
‘What you want to do?’
‘No.’
‘Well … don’t you want to speak to me about it?’
‘No.’
‘Dalena!’ I grabbed her arm, breathless, startled to feel the bones under my fingers. I hadn’t realised how thin she’d become. ‘Hang on a minute. What’s the big hurry?’
She stopped so suddenly that a man with an Afro hairstyle which surrounded his head like a black cloud bumped into her and muttered a curse. What had happened to the spirit of Christmas, I wondered, dismayed.
‘The shops close in an hour.’ I could hear that she was also breathless. ‘We still have to buy Christmas presents.’
Struck dumb, I stared at her.
‘That was the excuse for coming to Pretoria.’ She gripped my elbow as if I were blind, and guided me firmly on. ‘We can’t go home empty-handed!’
I stumbled along, speechless and blind, but unfortunately not deaf. Snatches of Christmas songs swirled out of every open shop door like driftwood: Oh, what fun it is to ride on a one-horse …, Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my …, I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …
I lay stretched out on my back while the sun stroked my body like a soft, warm hand. Not that any hand had ever touched my body in that way – low over my stomach, high over my thighs, even between my legs. It felt as if I were naked, as if I were slowly submerging my lower body into a lukewarm bath.
Just imagine lying naked on a beach and not caring if other holidaymakers stared at you! I sometimes dreamt that I was the only naked person in a crowd but it was the kind of dream I always had to struggle out of, sweating, as if out of a deep, dark hole, until I eventually woke up, infinitely relieved. I didn’t know why it didn’t feel like a nightmare today, but I suspected it had something to do with the inexplicable attraction I felt towards Pierre.
I resisted the temptation to touch the top of my new bikini to make sure that I wasn’t really nude. The sand enfolded me like a soft mattress, with comfortable hollows for my bottom and my shoulder blades. The murmur of the sea deafened all other sounds as if I had two huge shells pressed to my ears. I should have turned on to my stomach to ensure an even tan. But I felt too lazy to move a muscle.
Dear Dalena, I wrote in my imagination (as I did every day at the seaside), You won’t recognise me when you see me after the holiday!I’m browner than Pierre! (OK, perhaps not as brown as that, but browner than I’d ever been in my life.) The previous year I hadn’t picked up much of a tan because I was so in love with Nic that all I wanted to do was sit in his kombi and watch him surfing. Now there was another girl decorating his kombi. Which didn’t bother me at all.
What did bother me was that I never really saw him surfing. Surfers in their black wetsuits all look alike once they’re in the water. All you can really see from the beach is a collection of black flecks against the waves. You don’t have a clue as to which fleck you’re supposed to admire.
Of course I never told Nic this.
His new girl probably wouldn’t, either. She looked like Goldie Hawn, all blonde curls and cute smiles. I don’t know whether it’s sour grapes, Dalena, but when I listen to Nic now, he sounds so … I don’t want to be nasty, but I could swear he’s had too many blows on the head from his own surfboard. I can’t help wondering what Pierre would have to say about him.
I sat up when a sea breeze lifted the big straw hat off my face. She’d said she would come up with something, I kept assuring myself. She’d also said that she would write to me. And I had heard nothing from her. Just suppose …
The evening before I’d accompanied her to the doctor, I was eventually brave enough, or desperate enough, to call the thing by its name.
‘How are you going to do it, Dalena?’ I’d whispered louder than usual because it was hissing with rain.
‘How am I going to do what?’
‘How are you going to get rid of the baby?’
‘It’s not a baby,’ she’d whispered. ‘It’s a foetus. If there’s anything at all.’
A flash of lightning lit the hostel room for a moment. She lay in a small bundle on her bed. Like a foetus, I thought.
‘Well … what are you going to do … if there is something?’
‘I’ve heard you can go to Swaziland. Or Lesotho.’
‘For an abortion?’ When I had eventually managed to say it, the rumble of thunder made my voice inaudible. I didn’t know whether I felt disappointed or relieved. ‘But how will you get there? How will you find out … ?’
‘Don’t worry, Mart,’ she’d whispered. ‘Just enjoy your holiday.’
Dear Dalena, I wrote later, in the house by the sea, It’s Christmas Eve and Ilong to see my brother. And Pierre, oddly enough.
In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking of Pierre, but I wasn’t ready to tell this to my roommate. She would jump to the conclusion that I was in love with him, while I was becoming convinced it was something else. Something more, I would have said, but she wouldn’t have understood what I meant. I wasn’t even sure what I meant myself.
To think they’ll be in the bush tomorrow, chewing dog biscuits while our Christmas table will be groaning with turkey and cold meats and twenty different salads and side dishes!
Do you know I haven’t wanted to read a single newspaper during this holiday? I’ve only wanted to lie in the sun and forget about the world. But it’s impossible to miss the posters in the cafés! Have you seen how many South African soldiers are being killed in ‘the operational area’? Have you noticed that’s what they call it these days? No longer ‘on the border’. It makes me wonder.
I lowered my pen and listened to my family’s voices in the living room, the younger children noisy with excitement, the adults more sober and subdued. How could I ask what I had to ask on paper? Suppose the letter fell into the wrong hands? (Is there any news from Swaziland? What is the weather like in Lesotho? Do you still have that tummy problem – or are you better?) What my roommate was planning this time was more than just another naughty prank to be kept secret from her parents. It was something no one must ever know about, it was …
‘Illegal,’ I said aloud as if it were a French word I was trying to pronounce for the first time.
It felt as if I had burnt my tongue on the sound. Could they send her to prison for it? Did my silence make me an accomplice?
‘Ma-art!’ my father called, his voice unnecessarily loud. His brag ass voice, as Mother would say when the family was out of earshot.
It was almost eleven o’clock. Almost time for my father to slip away, unnoticed, to put on a creased plastic coat, a torn plastic hat on his head (even sillier than the caps he usually wore), and a false white beard which hooked over his ears with elastic. To play a perspiring Father Christmas as he did every year, for all the cousins who were still stupid enough to believe in a Father Christmas who looked as if he’d wrapped himself in a red shower curtain. After which, Grandpa Farmdam would read from the Bible, as he did every year, and pray for almost as long as the headmaster did. And then we would all sing ‘Silent Night’, as we did every year, while Ma wept without restraint. When Ma heard ‘Silent Night’ or the ‘Wedding March’ or the national anthem, she always became tearful.
‘It’s because of all those who are still with us,’ she had tried to explain to me, sniffing, one Christmas, ‘but might not be with us in a year’s time.’
‘So, you’re doing some crying for those who still have to die, Ma?’ Niel asked, frowning.
‘I suppose you could put it like that,’ Ma had replied, her mascara smudged black under her dark eyes, which she dabbed with a crumpled tissue pulled from under her bra strap.
Niel had stared at her with the same dark eyes and suddenly called out: ‘In anticipation!’
‘What’s that mean?’ Lovey had wanted to know, almost as inquisitive as I was about unfamiliar words.
‘Like in “thanking you in anticipation” at the bottom of a letter,’ Niel had said, his eyes still on Ma’s wet face. ‘If Ma starts crying now about all the people who still have to die, she won’t have to cry so much once they’re dead.’
‘I suppose you could put it like that,’ Ma sniffed again. But she hadn’t explained what her problem was with the ‘Wedding March’ or the national anthem.
‘Ma-art!’ Pa called again. ‘Come and read us a bit of French!’
I decided to ignore him. It was one of his party tricks to take out a bottle of French wine and to ask me to read the label, even if no one understood a word. Even if I didn’t understand any of it.
A few years ago I’d acquired a set of cassettes to teach myself French (in anticipation, I’d thought, of the attic in Paris), but never advanced any further than a few simple sentences: Je m’appelle Mart Vermaak. Which sounded so absurd that I’d decided to give myself a new name should I ever land up in Paris. Martine Verlaine was my favourite: Je m’appelle Martine Verlaine.
But all Pa really wanted was for me to impress a few people with my mock French accent. It was hardly difficult, as everyone who came to visit us knew even less French than I did. All I had to do was to purse my lips and to keep my voice breathy. Pa thought all French girls sounded as if they were having sex all the time.
I long for you as well, I wrote to my roommate. You may think I’m an idiot but I’ve been wanting to cry all evening. Not like my mother about everyone who might not be with us next Christmas, but about everyone I’m missing right now …
‘Mart isn’t wearing a hat,’ Niel said when Pa lifted his glass for a toast to the Christmas meal.
This was after Grandpa Farmdam had prayed for almost five minutes. It was supposed to be a brief grace but Grandpa Farmdam had no notion of brief prayers. He had started by asking a blessing for every single dish, from the turkey and the cold meats, the bean salad and the beetroot to Ma’s famous trifle into which she put so much sweet wine that even the children were slightly tiddly when they got up from the table. And then he prayed for those in authority, for each and every cabinet minister, for all the ministers of the church and headmasters and Defence Force officers in the country, and for every young soldier far away from his family … And just as we thought he’d finished, he added that he might as well ask our Heavenly Father to help us chase the Communists in Angola into the sea.
‘Put on your hat, Mart,’ Pa said and lowered his glass.
‘Sheesh, Pa, it looks so silly!’
‘We’re all looking silly,’ Pa said, as if that was a reason.
I stared at the stupid paper hat in front of me while everyone at table stared expectantly at me – Ma and Pa and Grandpa Farmdam, Pa’s sister and brother-in-law, Ma’s sister and brother-in-law, Niel and Lovey and six other children between the ages of three and thirteen – each one wearing a ridiculous paper hat. As if the whole family worked for a circus, I though rebelliously. Where had the tradition originated that we had to look like clowns while we ate our Christmas meal? With a sigh, I stuck the blue and red paper hat on my head and raised my glass of sweet sparkling wine.
‘I want to propose a toast to Simon.’ Pa was wearing a purple and yellow paper hat, torn on one side because his head was so big. ‘And to all the other soldiers who have to be somewhere on the border today.’
‘In the operational area,’ I muttered, but only Ma heard me. And she was biting her lip so hard not to cry that she couldn’t utter a word. A green and orange paper hat perched precariously high on her new, uncombed hairstyle. She had left her can of hairspray at home and decided to let her natural curls go their own way in the damp sea air. The result was a wild tangle which made her look easily ten years younger, but she kept touching her head in an uncomfortable way. She was afraid, she’d confessed that morning, kneeling in front of the stove, that perhaps she looked a little too wild for her age.
Meanwhile Pa’s toast, like Grandpa’s grace, had got out of hand. He was making a speech about all the dangers besetting our country, but if we stood together, like the Voortrekkers of old, we would overcome, like the Voortrekkers of old. I gave Ma a quick glance because I knew what she thought about the so-called banding together of the Voortrekkers. The Afrikaners had always been a contrary bunch, Ma said, with more wilfulness than wisdom. But her bottom lip had whitened from being bitten.
Niel held the glass of sparkling wine in front of his nose as if it were a rose he wanted to smell. Exactly like Pa, I realised. And every time Pa said something amusing – not exactly screamingly funny – Niel and he laughed with their heads thrown back at exactly the same angle. Occasionally you looked at those close to you as if your eyes were spotlights, lighting them blindingly. I had always thought Simon was Pa’s son because he looked like Pa. I had never noticed that Niel was really the one who spoke Pa’s body language.
Lovey’s paper hat, purple and red and much too big, had sunk so far down on her forehead that she had difficulty in seeing her food. The smaller children wore triangular cardboard hats with elastic under the chin, but Lovey refused to be reckoned among the smaller ones any longer. She was counting the days to the end of the holidays when she could go to high school with Niel and me.
‘Only two more weeks,’ she sighed. I sighed as well because I didn’t want to be reminded of school, especially not on Christmas Day. ‘Then Simon comes home, doesn’t he, Ma?’
The turkey turned bitter in my mouth.
‘Then Simon comes home …’ Ma rubbed the soft blue-white skin under her eyes.
‘I don’t understand the army!’ I burst out, the piece of bitter turkey still in my mouth. ‘Why couldn’t they send the boys home two weeks earlier!’
‘The army knows what it’s doing, Mart,’ Pa warned, his voice quiet and reasonable, as if he were speaking to a difficult client. ‘But Simon said that previously they …’
‘Previously things were different.’
‘But surely the terrorists won’t attack them on Christmas Day!’
‘I don’t think the terrorists will pay any attention to Christmas Day.’ Pa’s face flushed slightly and his voice sounded less reasonable. ‘Not forgetting the Cubans.’
‘Tcha, our army can send those terrorists to glory just like that!’ Niel’s knife swished through the air to illustrate his point. ‘That’s what our cadet teacher says. And he was on the border himself!’
‘Yes, we’ll show them they mustn’t mess with a Boer.’ Pa lifted his glass as if he wanted to propose another toast. ‘As the English discovered at the turn of the century.’
There is no need to panic, the Prime Minister had said in his Christmas message last night. Everything is under control in the country and on its borders. Which made me wonder again.
‘Will the war be over soon, Pa?’ Niel asked.
‘Heavens, yes!’ Pa said. ‘The Communists don’t have a snowball’s hope.’
‘I hope it’s not too soon,’ Niel said, his dark eyes yearning. ‘I want to go to the border too …’
Ma opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but only emitted an almost inaudible sigh.
London
15 May 1993
Dearest Child
They’re still calling it the chicken run, I note in the newspaper. Some people even speak about rats leaving a sinking ship.
And this brave mouse is thinking of swimming back to the sinking ship?
For many of those who have opted to leave South Africa at this troubled time and start a new life elsewhere, the act of emigrating is a psychological necessity – the only effective relief from what they perceive to be an unbreakable cycle of political violence, rising crime and personal physical danger.
Or do I want to struggle against the current again, simply to be otherwise, as my mother said? As self-willed as my father? As melodramatic as my sister? As full of false self-confidence as my younger brother?
Everyone knows someone who is thinking of leaving …
Or because all the questions we ask are eventually blown in the wind, as Simon would say? No matter where you live.
Love
M.