Embrace (56 page)

‘Ooh, la, la,’ he said, putting his hand on my head. ‘Are you feeling a little neglected?’

‘No, I’m just saying . . .’

‘We can’t, you know,’ he said, ‘get much more than pleasure — simple pleasure — from each other in a place like this. It’s too dangerous. In Europe you and I are going to spend more time together. How’s that sound?’

‘Wonderful.’

The sun was an hour or less above the mountains to our west. Injasuti, Cathkin, Champagne, Ndedema Dome, Gatberg, Organ Pipe Pass, the Pyramid, Inner Horn, Outer Horn, Cathedral Peak, the Saddle, up north into Mponjwana, the Inner and Outer Needles, Ifidi Buttress, Mount Oompie, the Amphitheatre, the Sentinel and Mont-aux-Sources from where all the country’s rivers sprang and the Drakensberg inexplicably turned into the Maluties. Six, eight deep, they drifted into paling purple rows, diffuse layers of horizon. God, how in that instant I adored you. How I could have wanted to love all of you: your wealth, your poverty, your black and white and brown and yellow and tan, your talking in millions, your cities, locations, your passive and angered and indifferent, your children with games and songs and bombs, mothers, fathers, your ancestors, your health and disease to envelop from every conceivable side my body and let your grass and sandstone and trees and water and air enter each pore of my skin; take me; how then, I thought, I would one day write verse upon verse to celebrate your splendour even beyond the precision of human words.

On the dust road from Estcourt he glanced at his watch. He asked whether I had ten minutes to spare. I grinned and nodded. Knew at once what he meant and said a quick yes. For half the day I had wanted to touch him, my penis going hard and soft sporadically throughout the trip. Now, as if permission had been given for my desire to take flight, as if I’d been told my lust was not out of place, I slid my hand between his legs. Self-conscious, stared from the front window. We turned from the Loskop road. Heading down a deserted road into a pine plantation I wondered whether the land belonged to the Therons. Amongst the pines were scattered patches of wattle and old eucalyptus, their white stems peeling biltongs of bark. For a moment I was thrilled at the prospect of us being discovered, perhaps by one of the Therons. Trespassers, caught in flagrante delicto — while the crime still blazes! The car hidden from the road, we sat back in our seats. He leant over and kissed me. I worried that my breathmight be smelly this late in the day, wished I had brushed harder in the morning.

‘Lets get out,’ I whispered, turning from his face, but he, trying to keep his mouth to mine, said it was too dangerous and we had to hurry. His hand was inside my shorts. I felt embarrassed feeling how wet I must have been even before he touched me. I wanted to be outside where we could lie down on the mat of copper pine needles. Where we could kiss and cuddle, and I could be on top of him.

‘This is too uncomfortable,’ I said, trying to hold my breath and putting my hand onto his. ‘Please, let’s get out.’

‘Okay,’ he smiled, ‘but this must be quick. Were going to be late for choir.’ He leant against a wattle and pulled me to him. I had never smelt him like this, unwashed, skin and sweat mingling with pine and eucalyptus. He knelt in front of me. I looked down on his head of black curls, the lashes resting on the white skin beside his nose, which broke the arch of his lips around my penis. His nose seemed broader than my shaft in his mouth and for some reason I felt the need to thrust my hips, to hide the whole thing from sight. I held onto the tree, my fingers clutching the rough bark. Closed my eyes. Feeling myself close, I stopped him. Tried to pull him up, but he had to do it himself. Then I turned him so that he was backed to the tree. I knelt, smiled up at him and felt the excitement of being almost adult, so able to manoeuvre him. For an instant I wished again that we could be seen. He cautioned me to be careful of my knee, not to get dirt in the wound. His trousers were down around his bandy legs, the penis arching out, the head half exposed, a crimson-purple emerging from the gaping grey foreskin. I took it in my mouth, and almost gagged as it touched the back of my throat or the glottis, had to pull away. I worked the foreskin with my left hand while my right was in my own loins, letting go when I was too close. I wished I could take longer to come, more like him. He moaned and I pushed my forehead against his belly, enjoyed hearing his sounds. I removed my lips and with both hands kept at it, watching the crimson head now coverednow exposed by the foreskin, beautiful, his hips pushed forward and then the squirt, shooting, dripping over my fingers, his hands in my hair, again putting my mouth over it, licking him, shivers from him, bringing myself to climax, looking down, watching me leak over my fingers onto the pine needles. Feeling instantly dirty and disgusted with myself.

‘Were late. Were late!’ he said, pulling a face and tugging up his trousers and tying his belt. I rose and pulled up my shorts, spotted the three red welts of mosquito bites on my upper thigh. I brushed grains of dirt from the wound and now felt my knee ache. The back of his shirt was stained by gum from the wattle. I pulled off the long slither and stuck it in my mouth, chewing, wanting to get rid of his taste.

We raced back up to the main road. It was almost sunset and we knew there was no way we would be on time. Dust flew behind us. He told me to fasten my safety belt. Seemed angry. We didn’t speak until he had parked the car in his bay and we walked swiftly towards the entrance. The sound of the Mass choir in warm-ups came from the auditorium. ‘The Maritzburg meeting took an hour and a half. Okay.’

‘Just over
an hour and a half’ I said.

The choir’s eyes did not move from Raubenheimer as Jacques and I walked into the hall. I cut through two rows to mount the middle bench. My voice joined the voices around me. My eyes joined the eyes on Raubenheimer; did not venture to Jacques who stood with his head bowed, listening. When Raubenheimer was satisfied he stopped us. Said, ‘Sir,’ as he nodded to Jacques and took his place in the front line.

‘Good sound. Thanks, Sarel,’ he said and nodded to the accompanist who moved to the piano at once.

‘Open up at 82. The minor chord. Apologies for being late. The meeting in Maritzburg lasted longer than I’d anticipated.’ I wanted to smile. That was it. It was true because it had been said. By him.

I was still scratching . . .
miserere nobis
 . . .

‘The priest has already said this is the body of Christ, this is the blood of Christ, okay?’ He nodded at us. ‘For the Catholics,’ he went on, ‘it is not a symbol, it is the real thing, you are literally eating the body that has been sacrificed for your sins. It’s almost the same for us Protestants. But for us it’s a symbol, okay? But you also believe in redemption and being saved because you have Jesus inside your body. You’ve eaten of the body, at least symbolically. When we join with the orchestra I want you to listen very closely to the instruments . . . Incidentally, they’re all looking forward to hearing you . . .’ And all I could think of was getting upstairs to see why my thigh would not stop burning. I was now certain it had to have been a hairy caterpillar. The moment we broke up I’d run to dab on some Savlon to stop the irritation.

At supper Dom and Lukas asked about the trip. I told them the doctor had said my knee was fine — maybe a bit of water on it; that Jacques and I had had an ice cream; that the meeting at Maritzburg had lasted a boring eternity. Mervy wanted to know about the violinist and I tried to describe what he looked like; gave as full a report as I could, elaborating on the timetable for the Jo’burg rehearsals and recordings. Saying how excited the violinist had said the Philharmonic was about the joint performance. I said I’d missed most of the meeting as I’d been walking around the campus talking to students.

During prep I raced through the Latin homework Bruin said Ma’am had given. Then fell to work on an essay I was trying to write in the style of Herman Charles Bosman.

Unannounced, Dom came to my bed that night.

‘Why didn’t you say you were coming? It’s not Saturday,’ I whispered, our heads beneath the bedspread.

‘I missed you today,’ he answered. ‘Where’s your torch?’

‘In the locker. No, let’s leave it, okay?’

‘Okay.’We faced each other in the pitch dark. When he spoke Ismelt the toothpaste from his mouth. Moved my head closer to his, till our lips almost touched.

‘I missed you too,’ I said.

‘I’m envious, you know,’ he whispered.

‘Of what?’ I asked. He said he envied me spending the day with Cilliers, and me getting to meet the lead violinist. I said there was nothing to be envious about. It had all been quite laborious and I’d have preferred to return to school after my stitches had been removed. Dom said he didn’t believe me, whispered that I must have felt happy meeting the violinist. ‘You’ve begun taking our music seriously, Karl. Haven’t you? So you must have felt a little grand at meeting the big shot?’

‘I suppose, yes. But I didn’t even know he was the big shot.’

‘He’s the leader of the orchestra.’ Dom said and I answered that I hadn’t realised.

Dominic changed the topic and said he was about to start serious rehearsing for his Grade Eight exams. That he had to use every free hour behind the piano and every hour in bed to sleep. ‘I really need to concentrate. I don’t think we should do this again till after my exams. Okay?’ I whispered no, it was not okay, but I understood. In an instant I was concerned that he suspected me and Cilliers, was at once afraid that he was withdrawing, that he no longer cared for me and was finding an excuse to keep from seeing me.

‘Dom, is everything okay? Is something wrong, or is it really only the exam?’ He brought his mouth to my lips and kissed me, moved his arm over my back and pulled himself closer.

‘It’s only the exam. You know I’d tell you if there was anything else. I love you.’ Again we kissed. ‘I’ve got four works, Karl. The Bach prelude and fugue I’ll do with my eyes closed, but there’s the complete Mozart sonata, you know. Then the big romantic Schumann and a modern piece. I’m not worried about the usual scales and the rest, but the works are going to be tough.’

We fumbled loose the top buttons of each other’s pyjama pants.

Shhh, I said. We were being too noisy. I wished we could have our own room, as we had on the Cape tour. Where we could do everything to each other, speak, breathe, without the overbearing fear of discovery. Where we had used spit to lubricate each other all over without fearing the squelches and Dom had brought a tin of Condensed Milk to bed one night. Where we could go all the way with each other like the night in their house at Saxonwold when he read me sonnets. Here, in the Berg, it was only the dry-hand waltz, not even sucking, and I now badly wanted to have him in me again, or me in him, his legs clasped round my middle, the pillow beneath his bum, his face smiling up into mine telling me he’d love me for ever. I thought of telling him about the key. Yearned to let him know. Then we could go outside and do it again somewhere in the bush. Decided I wouldn’t. Simply too dangerous and I couldn’t believe he’d want to do it in the wet grass where he’d easily pick up a cold.

After he left I tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, my mind a hive of teeming thoughts. I wondered whether anyone would disbelieve Jacques’s story. Would anyone suspect he’d lied? What makes anyone think someone else is telling an untruth? Omission, is that different from an act of direct lying? No, it was feasible that we’d been held up in Maritzburg. What if his car had been seen parked in the Therons’ pine plantation? My thigh itched. I took the torch from my locker and beneath the covers tried with my bitten nails to push crosses into the welts. Still unable to sleep, I got up. Might as well go and check if those other two were still here. I let myself out of the music room. A few steps away I turned back and left my slippers outside the window. No use getting them mucky and facing questions from Uncle Charlie.

The Milky Way was a haze of low-floating mist while around and before it in the black a million stars sparkled, winked. Dew-wet stalks licked at the hem of my dressing gown, bare calves and feet as I trotted towards the rugby field. Left, right, scanning the road that dividedthe orchard from the flat playing field, half expecting to see the outline of one or more farm workers trudging towards me. Across the field, cat-foot over landmines — blots of dark cow dung — I reached the river. I slowed down, catching my breath. Soon the sky above me was hidden by the ceiling of poplars, the stars now winking only through the gap above where the river gurgled over rocks, making its way to near Winterton to join the Little Tugela.

Our fort sat hunched like a mirage against the grey soil. From inside again their smell. But now not only theirs. Instead, mingled with the smoke and urine, the air smelt of something sweet, like wild gardenias or honeysuckle. Through the thatch came the sound of the two men asleep. I sniffed the air for the source of sweetness, reminiscent of the night scents of Mkuzi: surely
Turraeafbribunda
cannot grow this high up in the mountains? I came to a standstill at the entrance to the fort, snores now clear from the inside. Across the stream, in crevasses midway up the sheer four-metre rock face, clusters of white flowers were budding. Glowing in the night against their sandstone home, their white heads all that was visible beneath silhouettes of pines and poplars dotting the opposite shore. That must be where the scent comes from, I thought. For a while I stood quietly, straining my eyes towards the other bank. Could it be? No, I couldn’t quite make them out, but they were clearly not growing on a tree. Must be bulbs, I thought, something whose name I don’t know.

Juffrou Sang and Alette came to tell Bokkie about a concert of the Drakensberg Boys Music School. The performance was to take place in the Durban City Hall. My mother, in shorts, apologised for her appearance saying she’d been gardening all day. Against Juffrou Sang’s hearty protests, my mother asked me to turn on the kettle and wait in the lounge with the guests while she made herself presentable. Juffrou Sang and Alette told me about the school in the mountains. Bokkie came back in a dress, her hair brushed and colour on her lips. Juffrou Sang told Bokkie she’d like to take me to the City Hall concert; however, if Bokkie and the girls would like to join, we could have an outing — make an evening of it — maybe have coffee at a restaurant afterwards. Prof, as she called Alette’s father, had something on at university, so it would just be ‘us ladies and the children’. Beaming with pride, Bokkie said she would really like me to go. She said she was eternally grateful to Juffrou Sang for exposing me to a little culture and developing my talents. She’d tell the girls about the concert, and, if’ they were interested, we could all go. While they drank tea, Juffrou Sang complimented Bokkie on the interesting collection of African curios in the lounge, particularly the two clay Maasai heads against the wall, and Bokkie explained the simi and the beadwork — a necklace she had brought out from Tanzania. And that was our view from the farmhouse,’ she said. ‘Mount Meru.’ Pointing to the painting above the never-used fireplace.