Embrace (59 page)

During intermission Dominic and I left backstage to sell record albums. Neither Marabou nor Roelofse said anything about the yawn. In the foyer Lukas introduced us to his girlfriend Maryke. I could not believe she was the same girl who looked so attractive on the photograph in his Bible. This Maryke had hair like straw and terrible acne crusting along her jaw and temples.

Halfway to Port Elizabeth next morning, the bus pulled off onto the roadside. From beside Marabou, Mr Roelofse rose and peered over the seats towards the back of the bus. He said that there were two amongst us who had not slept the previous afternoon.
The Two
had not brought their side for the choir. One of
The Two
had yawned throughout the Indwe concert and ruined the school’s reputation. Were
The Two
going to speak up or was the whole choir going to be caned?

Sitting one forward from the very back across the aisle from each other, Lukas and I stood up.

‘De Man, again, leading Van Rensburg astray.’ I held Roelofse’s gaze. ‘Why are you here in the first place, De Man? Your voice is useless, you should rather go home and recite “The Moth and the Flame”. And you, Van Rensburg, just because you were on the family farm, doesn’t mean you’re free from your obligations. Rammetjie-uitnek.’

He told everyone to disembark and line up on the tarmac. Baking-oven! Jesus, I couldn’t believe he was going to let us crawl through there.

Thirty-eight boys disembarked and fell into line on the tarmac behind each other, facing the two of us. Ahead of us, legs apart, torsos inclined slightly forward, was a tunnel that didn’t worry me. The tarmac did. There was no way we were going to crawl hands and knees. Baboon walk, instead. We went through, hands and feet, occasionally lifting one of the shorter boys, while they beat us on the buttocks and back. It was not the burning bum that angered me, nor the occasional flat fist on my back, it was the damage to my palms from the tar road. I seethed. Angry at myself and desperate to know who had gone and told. The bus was already winding its way along the road again when I realised that all the while I had been saying a word over and over to myself: umQunube, umQunube, umQunube. Like a verbal amulet.

In PE Marabou announced that Dominic and I would not be staying together. Instead, Lukas and I were placed out with Mr

Roelofse. In our hosts’ home — the Morrises, I think — Roelofse stayed in the room right beside Lukas and me. We were already lying down for the two-hour sleep, whispering guesses about who had chirped, when Roelofse came in and said he’d come in every few minutes to do spot checks and ensure we slept the full, traditional two hours.

I had not slept once the previous year. Try as I initially had, sleeping during the day eluded me. At night I was able to muster no more than six or seven hours at most. So, during afternoon sleeps, I had taken to reading rather than tossing around. My buddies slept through the countless afternoons of host family bedrooms in towns and cities as we criss-crossed the country. And I remained alert through the adventures of Heinz Konzalik, Louis Lamour and Robert Louis Stevenson. Drifted into thoughts of life alone or with one or two friends on an American ranch or on a South Sea island. I introduced Lukas and Bennie to Louis Lamour, whose name they later kept dropping into conversations. I would eventually try and convince them to read ‘more complex’ works. ‘More complex’ was the concept I would eventually use to undetectably turn my ascent of ‘higher literature’ to a boast. Now I lay contemplating the ease with which Lukas had gone through the bakoond, how he had come out smiling; while I had felt little pain, but could choke on the force of humiliation. Resenting Lukas and whomever had split, exhausted from the baking-oven, loathing Roelofse for referring to my recitation, I did eventually fall asleep — the one and only time in the years at the school I was able to in the afternoon.

After the concert, Lukas bought Mr Roelofse a carton of Benson and Hedges Filter. It seemed the man’s attitude towards both of us softened considerably. Later, I would tell Bok and Bokkie that boys bought cigarettes for the conductors — that Mervy’s mum had given Mr Roelofse a small krugerrand to be mounted as a signet ring; Bruin’s parents were donating tennis trophies to the school — and Bok said that was arse-licking, that he would be livid if he ever heard that

I had done something like that. Despite what my father said, I knew that if I had the money I would buy carton after carton of cigarettes for Mr Roelofse or any of my teachers. I’d shower them with krugerrands. If that would make them like me.

And I asked Mumdeman to let Phinias wait until the dandelions were in seed.

Once the lawn was covered by miniature silver ballerinas on a stage, I would pray for wind. When in the afternoon the blowing swept up from the estuary, lifting the pirouetting and swirling into a mist of movement, I’d dance with the seeds while Phinias began mowing and the smell of Kikuyu came in the sap that turned my toes and footsoles green. The fine parachutes drifted and sped over the garden, and I moved among them while Phinias spun up and down the lawn, the mower revving, revving, sputtering when it hit a moist patch. Then Phinias had his foot on the machine, and pulled and tugged, just like Bokkie at home when she mowed. The smell of mowed lawn hung in the air — and dog shit if he went over where Skip had done his business — and the fairies and snowflakes were caught in spiderwebs or settled in the wet bright cut green grass against the bark of the kaffir tree or the huge tree wisteria, or twirling, up-up-up and away in gusts of wind.

A pear-shaped stone with hollows for a grip and a rounded, worn point that looked as though once it may have been sharpened. Lukas, who uncovered it deep along the overgrown ledge, said I could keep it. Delighted at the find and my ownership, I didn’t mind that we again had no time to do a proper search for the hidden cave. In the library I paged to find a sketch and a description of what it might once have been used for. Archaeologists placed the Bushmen in the category of the Later Stone Age, which lasted from 16,000 years ago till the present. Books maintained that the little wrinkly people once roamed the entire stretch of land now called the Republic of South Africa. As I’d learnt in Standard One Geography, the Bushmen were hunter-gatherers and dancing, acting, making musical instruments, singing and dressing-up and storytelling occupied much of their time. As people of the Stone Age they made all manner of implements from rock. Indeed, many such implements had been collected from the Drakensberg and placed in museums around the world. Much of what I read recalled my Geography lessons from when I first got to Kuswag: ostrich eggs used as water bottles; mysteriously poisoned tips on arrows; arrows carried in quivers; no domestic animals; dances around camp fires. But, now, in these few texts, there were descriptions of rock art. One book mentioned an artist named Walter Battis, who said of Bushmen art that no artists had said more with paint by saying less. I pondered the truth of the words, undertook to ask Ma’am, found myself in agreement with Battis: how extremely simple the little figures against the rock ledges are, yet we can see that they are moving their hands, flexing arms and legs. Even while the paintings have very few details, we can imagine almost exactly what’s going on in every scene. I wished the Bushmen of the Drakensberg and Umfolozi were not extinct. Umfolozi? I don’t remember seeing Bushmen paintings there; do I? I imagined riding up to the caves and finding some of them sitting around a camp fire, others painting against the back of the cave walls.

In vain I searched for a sketch of the implement Lukas had found. Most pictures in the books were photographs or reproductions of paintings. The ox-wagons in some rock paintings, so the books held, indicated that the Bushmen lived just over a hundred years earlier, when the Voortrekkers arrived in this vicinity from the Cape Colony. But, I wondered, who knows the age of my stone implement with its patterned indentations? How long since the hidden ledge had been used, before being abandoned and allowed to be overgrown? Or was it always like that, had it always been a secret hiding place, like a fortress against the marauding Zulus and the Boers with their guns? Could this rudimentary chopper, or ax, or digger, or weapon be as much as 16,000 years old? I must take it to Uncle Klaas, I thought, tonight, to show him and ask his opinion. Leaving the library I collected sheets of paper from the art cupboard, a pencil and a sharpener from our classroom and went to the music room where Dominic was practising. He formed his lips into a kiss when I entered, but continued over the keyboard. At a desk behind him, I made myself comfortable and placed the implement in a sheath of sun spilling across the flat surface. First I drew the shadows with the pencil point longways against the paper, then the outlines, the hollows and the rounded end. Once the drawing was completed, I signed it De Man in the bottom right, and on the second sheet started again. The sonata stopped and Dominic turned, came over and placed his hand on my shoulder as he watched what I was doing.

‘Where did you find it?’

‘Above Bushmen Paintings, along that hidden ledge.’

‘Did you find the other cave?’

‘No. But we will. That one’s for you,’ I said, lifting the pencil and handing him the first sketch. He smiled and said he’d thank me later, rolling his eyes suggestively, and returned to his seat. The piano started again and I dropped my head, adding a longer shadow beneath the object’s sharp point. The second sketch signed, I left, waving at Dominic, and went to place it on Ma’am’s desk. .

The stone tool was inside my dressing-gown pocket when I went on one of my surprise visits to his room. I heard the muted chords of Scarlatti. The door opened and he was in front of me. A frown quarried into his forehead beneath the wet slicked-back hair. Tonight there was no playful smile at seeing me. Instead his light grip drew me into the room without the usual roughing of my hair. Unable to ignore the change in our routine, the cool reception, I let the implement remain in the warmth of my pocket, my hand folded around its smooth, furrowed surface.

Jacques forced a half-smile and a nod, at the same time pulling me down to sit beside him on the bed. He stared into my face, as if searching for something there. ‘I’m worried,’ he said softly, then got up from the bed and briefly paced the room.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked in a whisper.

He turned to look at me intently. Now he smiled, but again, it was the concern that shone through.

‘Have you told anyone?’

‘Told anyone what?’ I asked.

‘About this?’ motioning with both palms upwards in a gesture that said: of us, of you and me, of this coming to my room.

‘No, I swear. I promise,’ shaking my head.

He returned to the bed and sat down beside me, still staring. ‘Don’t be scared, Karl. You know you don’t have to be afraid of me. Have you told anyone — Dominic, or any of your other friends?’

‘No, I promise you. I haven’t ever even’thought of telling a soul.’

‘Does anyone suspect, do you think?’

I shook my head.

‘Has anyone seen you leaving the dorm?’

‘No, Jacques, I swear. No one can possibly know. What’s wrong?’

He said he was worried, couldn’t quite tell why, but for a time we would have to be watchful. It’s merely a feeling I have, he said.

My mind raced, thoughts somersaulted as I searched for a slip, a lapse in vigilance, a word spilt. ‘No one knows,’ I tried to reassure myself as much as him.

‘How can
you
be so sure?’ he asks.

‘’Cause unless we’ve told anyone, no one can know. And I haven t; you must believe me.’

‘I do. Over lunch Uncle Charlie said something to Sandra — Ma’am — about boys moving around at night.’

‘But they do, some of them. That’s not me he’s talking about.’ ‘Who then?’

‘Probably Knowles going to Stein, or anyone else. I’m sure Knowles and Stein have something going on.’

‘Knowles and Stein? What a couple!’ He suppressed a laugh.

‘You won’t say anything, Jacques, will you?’

‘How could I?’ And without further explanation he seemed reassured. He pulled me closer and kissed my lips, my eyebrows, eyelids. I shivered and clung to him when his tongue ran into my ear and he reached over me, fumbling, to turn off the bedside lamp.

Later, he reiterated that my sneaking to his quarters had become too dangerous: ‘Let’s just give it a few weeks. Come only when I tell you.’ ‘Well, should I leave right away?’ I asked, sarcasm in my tone. He pulled me closer and said no, he wished I could stay till dawn. Satisfied, I snuggled into his neck. Niggling doubt, questions about whether I had done something wrong, I pushed to the back of my mind. Could Lukas have remembered the key? No, this was other boys sneaking around. Nothing to do with me and my key.

I told him about the afternoons drawings, that the Stone Age implement was in my dressing-gown pocket to show him. I moved to retrieve the object, but he held me back, saying he’d look at it later. For now he wanted only to feel me beside him.

I lay in his arms as we listened to Scarlatti, played on piano instead of harpsichord.

‘It is beautiful,’ he said.

‘Mmm,’ against his chest.

He told me of Domenico, son of Alessandro, how Domenico and Handel were contemporaries and friends. ‘The music can mean anything,’ he says softly. ‘Or if there is meaning, it is hidden by the way the composition communicates whatever it wishes to our senses.’

I try to understand what he says, mulling over his words. Can the music truly mean anything? What a peculiar thing to say and what a strange question to be asking myself. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asks, turning over onto his stomach, his eyes glistening at me from the pillow in the dark. I am thinking of Dominic’s hands, how they cross at the wrists, running over each other like baboon spiders. When he plays Domenico Scarlatti. ‘About what you just said,’ I whisper, ‘whether it’s true.’

‘Well, what goes through your mind when you hear Scarlatti?’