Embrace (45 page)

Bok and Mr Atwood found a site at the top of the cliff from where the filming could be done. While I stayed in camp with Jonasand Boy, Bok and Mr Atwood climbed the back incline with all the equipment. After an hour their tiny figures again popped into view on the ridge above the guano markings. Ropes swung down the cliffs and one by one the two men slid down to a ledge above the white stains where Jonas said he could make out the nest. There on the ledge they made a platform and erected a small cubicle of brown tenting fabric into which went all Mr Atwoods photographic equipment. Bok then climbed back up onto the ridge from where the tripod and huge flat camera were hoisted down to the old man in front of his cubicle. We stayed for a day to watch that all was okay. At first light Mr Atwood climbed the hidden incline and waved when he came back into view. Then he slid down to his perch from where he said he could see that two eggs had appeared in the mound of dry sticks, twigs, down and leaves.

We departed, leaving Boy there to cook Mr Atwood’s meals. We returned only once or twice a week to say a brief hello, pass on messages and new rolls of film, or to have a quick braai in the temporary lapa.

Months after Mr Atwood left, when I had long since stopped enquiring when we would see his movie, he returned, bringing along his wife. Against the wall of our lounge he showed the thirty-minute film that had taken six weeks to
shoot
and another four months in
editing —
the first time I heard the word. The movie was called
For Loving Fagles
and while I’d had nothing to do with either its filming or the process of
production,
the entire event felt as though my eyes, my life, were somehow in every
frame:
starting from the eggs, then the hatching, then the little chicks ugly like newborn porcupines, the frenzied feeding, the parents attacking the cubicle, their talons ripping the tenting to shreds; to where the chicks waddled to the edge of the nest, inspected the ledge of the cliff, took the plunge and rose into their first flight. Magnificent. Utterly breathtaking. There were scenes of the camp with Boy; the hoisting up and down of equipment, and Mr

Atwood said this was what good documentary film-making was about: where the person making the film showed parts of the process of production; how challenging it really was to find apt
locations
and relevant species; that animals and birds were shy and not man’s friend — contrary to what Walt Disney movies set out to show the world. It was ridiculous to lead people and children to believe in a non-existent world of innocence where animals were abundant, not aloof, not dangerous, not territorial and not aggressive. I wondered why Mr Atwood — having wanted to show the process of making a wilderness film and of how one got
close-ups
of animals — had cut out Bok’s handkerchief that had been used to lure the pythons from their holes? But I none the less agreed with what Mr Atwood had said about showing how he had made the film. For weeks afterwards wished I could rewatch it. Thought of it in bed at night. Wished I had been in it.

Once more, Mr Atwood returned to Umfolozi. This time it was to make a movie about Bok as a game ranger. They spent weeks in the bush and again I often accompanied them and saw the fascinating way movies were made. They set snares, then stuck a live impala’s neck in and filmed as it struggled. This was to show what illegal poaching did to animals. They filmed Jonas and Boy setting up camp, and later, when I saw the movie, there were sections of Bok on trail with tourists that I had not seen them shoot, and another of Bok walking along a footpath and stepping on a metal trap that slammed shut like hippo’s jaws around his boot. They went to the Lion Park near Maritzburg and there filmed a donkey being eaten. That footage was then stuck into the film as if it had happened in Umfolozi to one of Bok’s trail donkeys just outside the trailist’s lapa. It looked completely real, and Bok was like a real film star. I wished we could move to America and all be in movies. Then I wanted only to be a game ranger acting in movies: out came a shoebox that doubled as a poacher’s snare in the footpath. Action,’ I’d call, then strut down the path apparently looking at game through binoculars. Stepping in the shoebox I’d scream and fall into the grass, cursing the poachers and calling to an imagined Jonas and Boy for help. Suz would be all over me, licking and whimpering: her disbelief suspended time and time again. For a while I’d lie in the sun, telling Suz that unless she went for help, I’d perish once lion, leopard or cheetah found me in the path.

‘Cuuuuut’,
I’d call, then get up and say: ‘Well, Mr Atwood, were you satisfied with the
takeT

‘No, Ralph, sorry. Actually, I’d like to do one more take. Perhaps a little more pain on your face when you step in the trap? Do you mind?’

‘Certainly, Joseph. We can go on till we get it right,’ and I’d begin again, strutting from the bottom of the footpath, Suz at my heels.

How many other texts sabotage memory here? How what was read, seen, feared, loved and believed later, filters now the Joseph Atwood, the Karl De Man of then? The more I thought about the donkey being chewed up — that it hadn’t even happened in Umfolozi but that Mr Atwood had the power to make it happen wherever he liked — the more I thought I would perhaps make movies. Better yet, write them, produce them, star in them, shoot them, edit them, and show them. If you did that, you had the power to make a story into fact, fact into story. Just as you pleased, to fool or entertain the whole silly world.

Tobie and Chiluma cleared our dishes while the six of us listened to Seven Singles and albums from the Olvers’ collection. They and Ma’am were away at the neighbour’s for supper. Soon the six of us were dancing to The Beatles and The Beach Boys, with Tobie and Chiluma pausing to watch from the dining room, grinning at us through the doorway. I ran to our room and slipped out of my school T-shirt into the blue and white one Dom had brought me from Paris. When I walked back into the lounge everyone whistled as I clicked my fingers and jigged my hips. Mervyn and Bennie complained that there was no disco music and that The Beatles belonged in the sixties. Dominic invited Tobie to join us and the man roared with laughter. Dominic persisted, imploring him to come onto the floor, but Tobie shook his head and said no, the master would soon be home. Then Dominic bounced over and grabbed him by the arm, both of them laughing, and he tugged Tobie into the lounge. Soon the two of them were jiving around. The rest of us called approval from the chairs, and Chiluma stood grinning against the door frame. After the song Tobie ran from the lounge, in stitches, he and Chiluma clasping hands and giggling while we clapped and called for him to come back for another dance. I found both Patsy Cline’s and Frank Sinatra’s
Greatest Hits.
After a brief argument about my old-fashioned taste the others allowed me to play just a few tracks. Chiluma and Tobie again stood in the doorway, waiting to see and hear what we’d get up to next. Almeida and Lukas, Mervy and Bennie, and Dominic and I waltzed; big, dramatic turns, with me steering Dominic and shouting direction to the others. When ‘I Fall to Pieces’ — the duet with Jim Reeves — came on, we all stopped, for alas, the song was not a waltz. From the doorway, Tobie said: ‘Two-step, Master Karl, two-step,’ and before Bennie in his overeagerness could remove the LP from the turntable Tobie and I were spinning around the room, me leading, him following, like a champion. I wished Bok and Bokkie could see me, now better even than when they had taught me. Tobie was as light on his feet as I must have been in the days my parents had guided my first steps — and now I was leading. It was a terrific moment. Tobies smiling face and tasselled red fez above me, his torso covered in the long white cotton suit like an Arabian prince, I thought, coming to pay homage at Scheherazade’s court. If only I were dressed formally, and not in the PT shorts and T-shirt, what a picture we’d make. Dominic draggedthe coffee table from the centre of the floor to the side, opening up a large space across which we could move.

The music and our elegant twirling came to an end. Tobie was immediately bashful, peering at us through his fingers and shaking with laughter. Everyone applauded. When ‘A Poor Man’s Roses’ came on, he and I again swept around the room, this time in ever widening circles, bigger steps, bolder swirls, arching our backs outward, turning away and stepping out from each other, coming together again, interlocking hands and again twirling around the room. As the song advanced, we grew breathless, yet continued as if we had only just begun, smiling at each other. The bystanders grew quieter, even as we grinned at them and each other.

Then, it was a twist, the last song on the album — ‘Too Many Secrets’ — and everyone including Chiluma came onto the lounge floor. I showed off Oupa Liebenberg’s Charleston. Soon we were all doing it, pulling faces, laughing, sticking out our palms to one another, or swinging imaginary strings of pearls. Things fizzled from there and no objections followed my placing Sinatra on the turntable. Bennie and Lukas drifted to their rooms and Mervy, Dominic, Almeida and I remained. This is Gershwin, Dom said, did you know he was a homosexual? Ignoring the question, I stared from the window across the lake. Behind me the music was changed. I would have loved to remain there. Live in the house and take care of it while the Olvers went back to England. I turned to face the lounge. Dom stood, ready to say goodnight. Almeida was going through the rows of LPs. Mervyn was looking at Tobie in the doorway. Tobies red fez was now gone, his head of hair exposed. Small plaits ran back to his crown. My eyes rushed down his white cotton-clad body even as he kept his on my face.

‘Goodnight, Masters.’

‘Goodnight, Tobie . . . Thanks for supper. And everything.’

He smiled, turned around and left through the dining room and kitchen.

‘I hate it when they call me Master,’ Dominic said and left the lounge.

‘I’m going to bed, will you two turn off the lights?’ Steven asked as he and I pulled the coffee table back to the centre of the room. Ma’am and the Olvers came through the front door. They told us about their supper and asked whether we boys had had enough to eat. As Mervyn and I prepared to leave, Ma’am pointed and asked about the T-shirt I was wearing. I laughed and said Dominic had brought it as a gift for me from Europe. Mr Olver said our shoes were still out on the jetty and he thought it best if we brought them inside lest we forgot to pack them in the morning. Mervyn and I walked out to the jumble of sandals, then made our way back to the front door. In the passage outside the lounge we came to a standstill. It was Mr Olvers voice: ‘. . . All of them, you know. Borderline cases.’ And then Ma’am: ‘I suppose that’s the million-dollar mystery, isn’t it? How to keep a boy sensitive and still make sure he’s not . . . You know . . . Happy!’ Their laughter rumbled into the passage. I shoved Mervyn and we walked by the lounge door without looking in. We didn’t say goodnight to them or to each other.

Under our mosquito net, I turned onto my back. I slid my hand into Dominic’s pyjama shorts and he moved his into mine.

At last,’ he said out loud and I said shhh, please. We tugged off our shorts. He clasped my erection in his fist and began moving the skin. With his in mine, I did the same. After a while he whispered that he was close. Not thinking, I whispered back — close to what — but he just grunted and suddenly I felt it, wet, warm, and for a moment I thought he had pissed. Then its slippery texture struck me and I knew he had squirted semen, juice, come. This was what Lukas had meant that day with the sheep; what happened before his bed’s springs went quiet; this was like King’s litres of squirt into Cassandra. How remarkable, how fascinating.

The hard object in my hand was going limp, and to my regret Dominic had stopped manoeuvring mine, which remained erect. He took the tip of the white sheet and wiped his belly, then dropped the wet section down the side of the bed. He faced me and asked whether I wanted to come. I said it had never happened to me. Snorting, he said it was time I had the experience. Once I felt it, he said, I would be addicted: ‘Only difference,’ he whispered, ‘unlike Condensed Milk and drugs, this has no bad side effects.’

He tried with his hand to bring me to a climax, but eventually, when I heard he was exhausted, told him to give up. Warm and sweaty, we pushed the sheet off us till we lay uncovered beneath only the mosquito net.

He asked what I liked most about him. I grunted, embarrassed by the question, and thinking now of what Mervy and I’d overheard from Ma’am and Mr Olver.

‘Come on, tell me,’ Dom insisted and I pushed Ma’am and Mr Olver from my mind. The idea of verbalising what I liked about him was somehow indecent. It fell, I thought, like what we had already been doing, into a realm of things boys were not meant to ask of each other. This was the
borderline.
Alette could tell me she loved me and I could tell her in letters that she was beautiful. But voicing intimacies to Dominic in the dark not only seemed impossible, it constituted a further blurring of the space I had allowed us to enter. He nudged me, waiting for an answer. This is my last night in Malawi, as part of this school or as Dominic’s friend, I told myself. Just go for it. Just once.

Eventually I said: ‘Your sense of humour.’

‘Yes. I agree, I do have a marvellous sense of humour. And?’

‘And . . . your kindness. And your voice. It was like dew, shining on blades of grass, when you did “Last Rose of Summer”.’ Above us, the outline of the mosquito net was neatly tucked into a ring from where it spread into a giant magnolia in folds out and over us.

Without my asking he said: ‘I love everything about you, your hands — if only you’d stop biting your fingernails, your legs, your feet,your dick,’ he giggled, ‘your generosity and your energy.’ A list of praises washing over me like a breeze from the lake, yet still leaving me slightly embarrassed. No one had spoken to me like this before. Trepidation, the awareness that something was wrong, kept flicking the corners of my mind. His list had brought to my tongue ideas I wanted to speak, about him, though I couldn’t: your fingers, Dominic, with round fingertips like little pink gecko’s toes, those I love; your cheeky smile, your giraffe eyes, those I love and have dreamt of kissing; the sights you throw when you’re having fun behind the piano like when you did your Liberace impersonation in Marabou’s class or your concentration when you’re just alone with the music; the way your thin hair gets sweaty during hikes and sticks to your temples and the way your temples throb when you’re having an argument with Bennie; the way the tip of your nose moves when you speak. Not a word of it could leave my lips.