Embrace (32 page)

‘Why did you write a play about that?’

‘It sounded like an interesting story, Dr Taylor.’

‘What about it interested you, Karl? You read a lot, you could have written a play about any other story.’

‘I have, Sir. I have written other plays. I wrote one about Sinbad, and Dominic and I want to write a musical about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Something like
Oliver,
which we performed last year. Dominic is brilliant with composition and I’ll write the lyrics.’

‘But you also wrote the story about the regent from North Africa.’ ‘West Africa,’ I say.

‘Well, why were you fascinated by that story? It sounds rather original to me, please tell me about it.’ His voice has changed. Perhaps there is really no reason to fear or distrust him.

‘Maybe,’ I say, ‘it is because she could only rule if she dressed as a man.’

‘So the regent was not a king.’

‘She was a king because she was dressed up as a man.’

‘And in your play, did she dress as a man?’

‘Yes. But only until she was exposed. Someone hated her and they exposed her.’

‘At which time it became apparent she was a woman?’

I nod my head.

‘In your play at school — who was in the play? All your friends?’ ‘Not all. Almeida was the queen’s peasant husband, who went around searching for her until they were reunited. Dominic played the piano and Mervyn the violin. Bennie was the leader of the servants — slaves — and Lukas and some others were all peasants.’

‘And you, who were you?’

‘I was the king.’

‘The queen.’

‘The king-queen.’

And then he leaves off talking play. He asks, and this the writer remembers, these words are not reconstructed, they were the man’s: ‘You’re almost thirteen, Karl. Do you think you are the boy your mother and father wanted?’ I do not know how to respond. He is not angry, speaks gently, drawing me in, affirming: ‘Do you think your parents are proud of a boy who pretends to be a girl?’

‘I don’t pretend, Dr Taylor. It’s just a play. In a play you can be anything.’

‘Do you want to be a girl?’

I shake my head: ‘No, Dr Taylor.’

‘Do you want to be a boy?’

‘Yes, Dr Taylor.’ I look down at my hands, fold the bitten, fingernails into fists. I do not say: no, I want to be everything. I want to be whatever I want to be. I can play at being whatever I want to play. Leave me alone; you repugnant, bald, old man with glasses as thick as canfruit bottles. Die, die, die, you’re old and your life is over you will die soon and the worms will devour your wrinkly old skin and you’ll be nothing, nothing, nothing, while I’m alive and living playing whatever I want to play. Nor do I think, Bok, bastard, why do you do this? Nor that I hate you, Buys, just like Buys and Miss Marabou and Miss fucking Roos, doos, boys death orphanages poor Mervy s bloody bum what does this old goat know old ugly ugly man swallowed into the earth, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone. I do not know how to say that. All I know is that I am ashamed of myself. Hate myself. All I can say is both what I wanted and knew how to say from what I knew I was expected to say.

‘Well, Karl? Do you want me to help you become the boy your parents always wanted? Don’t you think that will make them proud?’ What did this man know about me; about the events of the previous term; of my whole life; everything?

‘Yes, Dr Taylor.’

‘You want to be the boy your parents will be proud of?’ A broad, pleasant smile spread across his face.

‘Yes, Dr Taylor.’

‘Tell me again, Karl, you say it to me.’

‘I want to be the boy my parents will be proud of?

He smiled. Leant forward and patted my knee. He told me I had now passed through the phase of childhood and adolescent games; now was the time to start the real ball game of young manhood. Unless I let go of the pubescent phase my development would be arrested, right into old age, and I would remain a boy for ever. ‘Now is the time to let go of the way you’ve been in the world, Karl. Now you must learn to speak and behave like a real young man. You don’t want to crawl around in boyhood for ever, do you, Karl? When you’re a thirty-year-old man, you don’t want to still be where you are now, do you? Clearly you are a gifted boy intellectually, butemotionally you’re underdeveloped, so now’s the time to get the emotions and the intellect lined up — so that one is not ahead of the other. That’s my job to help you with.’ He said he wanted to tell me a little story. Something I should bear in mind — for it would serve as a guiding myth to me for the rest of my life: ‘There was once an old, very wise man, who was respected by the whole village. He was blind. Blind, but very, very wise. Everyone came to him for advice. About their crops, about their children and babies, about disease, about the weather. One day, a group of naughty children came to him and stood in front of him with a bird in their hands. They asked the old man: tell us, if you are so wise, is this bird we hold in our hands alive or dead? And what do you think the old man said, Karl?’

‘He said they must let it go, Dr Taylor.’

‘No! He was blind, and he couldn’t see whether it was alive or dead. No, the old man knew they were trying to trick him. He said: I don’t know whether it is alive or dead or whether you even have a real bird in your hands. But what I do know is that it is in your hands.’

‘It is in your hands,’ he repeated. ‘Do you understand the moral of the story, Karl?’

I had an inkling, but surely the old man was not saying they could do with the bird as they pleased? What if it was alive and they killed it? I wanted to lie and say yes, I understand completely, but somehow I imagined that if Dr Taylor gave it to me, explained exactly what he meant, I would be saved. I felt my spirit soar. Like the world was being lifted from my shoulders. Maybe I would, indeed, become the boy my parents wanted. Everything was going to turn out perfect. In grasping the story lay my salvation.

‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Please explain to me, Dr Taylor.’

‘It is in your hands, Karl. You want to be a boy your parents can be proud of, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Dr Taylor.’

‘Well. The old wise man is telling you: it’s in your hands. You, andonly you, can turn yourself into the boy your parents want you to be. It’s in your hands. Are you ready for the challenge?’

‘Yes, Dr Taylor.’

From the next session Dr Taylor and I started working on my
programme of action.
My
POA,
as he suggested we call it.

1. I was to stop acting like a girl in plays — better yet if I wrote plays without girls in them, or why write silly childish plays at all when I wanted to be a young man? I was going to be a lawyer anyway, wasn’t I?

2. I was to go all the way in rugby — learn to be aggressive in the scrum, roar like a lion when I went down in my position as lock; know that the other team was out to hurt me and I should learn to hurt back — don’t play dirty, but play hard.

3. I was to stop reciting poetry. Poetry was girlish and unmanly, and, as a substitute, I was to take two weights of lead pipe and build my muscles every night. Become proud of my body.

4. I was to quit acting girlish at school — try and deepen my voice; I was to stop using my hands when I spoke — only girls use their hands when they gossip.

5. I was to stop being friends with girlish boys and as nice as Dominic sounded he sounded a bit queer — did I know what queer meant? And the little Jewish violinist — now he sounded like a real pansy — and you know the things with Jews . . .

6. But my friend Lukas, now he sounded young and manly and I was to be friends with boys like him. Steven Almeida, well, I could work that out for myself.

7. Now, as for my handwriting, write a sentence. ‘What is this here?’ ‘It’s an ampersand, Dr Taylor.’ ‘Why do you use it?’ ‘I like its shape, Dr Taylor.’ ‘Look at all those curls and swirls, look at this preposterously curled E, Karl! And contrast that with Bok’s handwriting on this cheque.’ Now, didn’t I think my handwriting was too curly and girlish? It could be manly if I slanted it to the right, like Bok s. Yourhandwriting is you, like your name: it is your face to the world. Twirly-wirly handwriting was a dead give-away. At first, when I left Dr Taylor’s office and walked down West Street back to the station, it felt as though my head was separating from my body. Or maybe all that was left of me was my head full of new ideas. It felt as though everyone in the city were looking at me, were programmed to keep an eye on me because I was dangerous. Maybe there was a machine in my brain that they could all read to see and hear what I was thinking. Like a futuristic robot or a machine. It was said that in the future machines would be able to think and act like people, and maybe I was such a machine. Which meant they all knew what I was thinking. I tried not to think of anything bad or girlish. I wondered whether to everyone around me my head might resemble a balloon or an outsized egg, drifting on the pavement at head height. I looked into the big glass windows of 320 West just to make sure my torso and my legs were still there, attached to the enormous oval. It was all right; all there; together. Head still the same size. And then I began to see myself as important, as though I had been elected or chosen for some reason to be brought to Dr Taylor; as though I were special and all the pedestrians and people in cars along West Street knew, as they saw me, that I’d been predestined for some or other as yet unspecified greatness.

Bok, smiling ear to ear and rapping me playfully on the back, took me to a friend of his who worked at Isipingo Steel Works near Louis Botha. The man cut four small weights from steel piping. I would take these back to school and build my muscles whenever I had a chance. Just lift them, up and down, for half an hour at a time. If I was shy to do it in front of the other boys, I could do it in my bed after lights-out.

Before my return to the Berg, Bokkie covered the metal piping in orange Terylene fabric: so that they’ll be more comfortable for you to hold.

A freezing June afternoon; mist from our mouths, even in the classroom. Jeans and polo-neck jerseys. Dominic had already been overseas for about three weeks. Steven Almeida had permission from Uncle Charlie to stay with us in E Dorm while Dom was away.

Almeida and I were held in detention. We had caught and painted about two hundred flies in different tempera colours, kept them in a plastic bag, and then surreptitiously freed them during Miss Roos’s Geography lesson. Red, blue, green, yellow, orange flies everywhere. Five hundred times each, on the jotter pages:
I am not allowed to colour flies with tempera and free them in Miss Roos’s class.
Detention with Miss Roos didn’t feel like serious punishment. She chatted to us while we wrote lines, told us about her family, her husband’s job, all the years she had taught at the school. Miss Roos had a big posterior — as she called it — that swayed from side to side as she walked, her face hearty and open and her laugh infectious and loud. With the school since its founding, she and her family farmed on the Bergville road. She was the only teacher who didn’t live on the school premises. Her children went to school in Estcourt with the Therons.

We liked Miss Roos as our teacher. She had a great sense of humour, always joking with us — even about sex — and you could hear her laugh travel through the school wherever she went. Unlike the live-in academic staff, she did not seem particularly involved with school affairs or the choir, although she did play the piano and taught Music Theory.

Imagining the lines went faster if the phrase were broken, I’d write fifty
I am not allowed’s
then, once done, beside those, fifty
to colour flies in tempera’s
and finally fifty
and free them in Miss Roos’s classes.
The result was that each line looked as though it had been written in three slightly different sets of handwriting.

Leaning into the page, scribbling the lines on the jotter, I heard them through the open window: snorting, neighing, hooves strikingfur, clipping into the turf. I looked up. On the embankment above our classroom, King was trying to mount Cassandra. The mare, ears flattened against her head, vapour from her mouth, kicked and pranced; King trotted off then approached her again. He reared — jets of steam from his flaring nostrils and mouth into the cold colourless air — tried to get his forelegs over her rump, only to have her pull out from beneath him while he tried to cling on — still on his hind quarters — the flanks of his magnificent thighs aquiver; chunks of mud flying from beneath hooves. Cassandra’s vagina dripped ooze, like she had just been peeing. Beneath King, his penis, thick as my wrist, white with black blotches, curved up, nodding against his stomach, the tip like a swinging shower-head. When he mounted her again, the penis seemed to fling itself from side to side, searching for her opening, squirting juice in streams as the curved pipe tossed around. Cassandra paused, pranced in one spot, stood still and his rod jittered around the opening, still shooting out the juice. I felt myself go stiff. This was what coming was, Lukas said, now I can see it, litres, litres. King was coming, shooting squirt; beautiful; fantastic. I looked at the desk at the front of the class and found Miss Roos’s eyes on the horses. She glanced at me, smiled devilishly and said: ‘Karl, enough of watching the horses at play; back to the task at hand.’ I tried to concentrate on the lines. But knowing they were out there, hearing them, drove me to distraction.

‘They’re mating, Miss! Cassandra’s going to have a foal.’

‘I know very well what they’re doing,’ she laughed. ‘But it’s none of our business.’

‘Please, Miss, can’t we watch? It’s no big deal. King is servicing Cassandra.’

‘You make it sound like a mechanic doing something to a car!’ Miss Roos giggled and Steven and I laughed too.

‘That’s what Wilbur Smith calls it, Miss Roos,’ I said, telling her to read
When the Lions Feed.
I kept glancing at the horses, trying to catch a glimpse of Cassandra’s spectacular oozing opening, her upturnedhead and bared teeth, clouds of vapour everywhere, and King’s thick sausage ramming in and out, his tail curved, the muscles of his buttocks and flanks shivering as if he’d lost control of his skin.