Embrace (60 page)
The truth is that I’ve never thought about it. About Scarlatti or anyone else. In choir, when he gives us an image to hold on to, like with parts of the Mass, of hundreds of people weeping, or in folk songs or madrigals of girls dancing and laughing around a maypole, that is the picture I take and try to imagine. Fabrications of my own I do not have. And even my accepting of images to go with music, that too is new, for last year and the year before the conductors could ply us with ideas and images that either made no sense to me or mattered not at all: in one ear and out the other as I frequently willed parts of concerts and entire rehearsals over. It has been only now, in the months that I’ve been out of first soprano and in second, in a voice where I am able to sing every note, hear mine meld with those around me and give body to the sound of the whole, that images are starting to make sense, that I have begun to look forward to almost every practice session and each concert. That it is not only the idea of Europe that appeals to me, but performing to the educated audiences who carry in their ears the musical traditions of a thousand years.
‘Is the art of music different from other art? For example, the drawing you made this afternoon?’
For a moment I think. ‘Drawings, they stick around. But music, once it has been played, disappears, it’s over.’ I speak into his face and wonder whether I have smelly breath; can’t recall having brushed after showers.
‘Yes, music is an instant. It does things that words or paint orphotographs can never do. Play it again and it is entirely new. Ma’am agrees with me, I think,’ he says. I contemplate his idea that when you hear a piece a second time it’s entirely new. I want to say that I disagree, but I’m not sure whether I do, afraid that my thoughts might not be relevant to the issue being discussed. Maybe I’m not understanding anything he’s saying.
‘Come on,’ he prods, ‘what do you say?’
‘If I hear the Scarlatti again,’ I say, terrified of sounding stupid, ‘I ‘ will be unable to hear it without thinking of this moment I first heard it, here with you.’
‘Ha!’ he laughs, turning his face from me. ‘You’ll soon forget me and listen to Scarlatti uncontaminated.’
‘I won’t ever forget you,’ I say, running my hands around his shoulders, lifting myself and lying on top of him. ‘So,’ I say, ‘even if it disappears, when it comes back, it’s not new.’
‘That’s why we protect ourselves from too much experience. Ignorance is bliss. The more we have under our belts, the less likely we are to see the world as black and white.’ His words come and I try not to let him know what I’m thinking. I remain silent. This is a difficult series of concepts. ‘But what about the first time you hear a piece?’ he asks. ‘Then you have no associations to drag the music away from the here and now? Then it is pure, and beautiful in and of itself, surely? Isn’t that the function of all art: the attainment of beauty for its own sake?’ Again I remain silent, wondering about the question.
‘No, it’s not, Jacques. Because when I hear a piece for the first time, like when we started the
Missa Sokmnis
with you, I already associate it with other pieces, just a few bars here and there. Or it puts me in a mood because I can’t sing without knowing you, there in front of us are,’ I pause, ‘my lover.’ The word, as well chosen as it was, sounds awful and out of place. He tugs me to him, kisses my head. ‘But that has nothing to do with the music,’ he says, ‘and everything to do with you, Karl.’
‘I can’t help it,’ I say, a sadness, an embarrassment at having said something wrong, fingering my mind.
‘So, you’re saying nothing is inherently beautiful, everything is subjective. Like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’
‘I suppose . . .’
‘So, if you don’t see beauty, it means there is no real beauty or no really great art.’
For a moment I struggle to follow the logic of his argument, unsure that is what I meant. His conclusion sounds wrong. For surely, surely, there are things that everyone on earth would agree are beautiful? Like the rock paintings, even if the books this afternoon said they were functional as much as aesthetic — words I was yet to look up. Or the flight of louries, in the instant they open their wings, when from below in surprise you see the hidden red — no, crimson — fold out from where you thought there was only green and purple. Yes, surely, the flight of louries is something that will move every human with its beauty. Forget about the Big Five! Who decided what was the Big Five anyway? Change it! Add new names. The Big Six! The Big Six is what it should be! But still, it’s really like Basil Hallward says:
Every portrait painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the thing he paintsl
Overseas the imbeciles wont even know what a lourie is! Yes, I’ve just copied it into my diary! I want to tell him that when I first saw him, even long after I first came to his bed, I never thought him beautiful. Handsome. Yes, I had found his face so plain, had feared him and perhaps, perhaps even hated him after that night in Mathison’s office last year. Is that possible! That I once saw him and the beginnings of us together in a light so different from what he and we have become? Since March, the way it was then has been almost forgotten. On that diving board, when, from the way I understood his eyes on Lukas, I had suspected he was interested in precisely the things he had seen punished last year, I had thought of adventure and maybe a little revenge. And then, within months I fell in love with him, have come to need being with him, have come to find him ravishing, cannot nowget enough of him: how rapidly he grew on me, spreading under and over my skin like lichen or moss —
parmelia reticulata
— in a perfect habitat. And then, that he is different from Almeida and Almeidas sister, whom I saw and instantaneously found beautiful, with a look that tells you: I have never looked like that, I don’t now, and I never will. A physical beauty that sears itself into memory. Like Dorian Gray. Steven and Marguerite Almeida. For a moment I want to ask him whether he remembers Steven; wonder, if Steven were here, whether he would have still chosen me. And I remember that it is I who have chosen him. And then Alette and Dominic, who also only with time became beautiful to me, only as I got to know them. That Alette’s short legs don’t matter, that her laughter does, and her white teeth. Or the prints in Ma’am’s books of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings! How at first I hadn’t a clue what made them special, had thought Pierneef s paintings of the high veld so much better. But, the longer I looked at
White Birch
and
Cottonwood Trees in Spring
— trees I have never seen, that are not indigenous to this country — how her paintings had since altered the way I see most trees and vegetation. Afternoons, when I look at the poplars down on Sterkspruit’s bank, I see cottonwoods in spring. And there are photographs a man took of O’Keeffe, of her hands, that reminded me from the first time I saw them, of Bokkie. Something in the woman’s face, the dark hair, in her strong fingers, the thick unplucked eyebrows, the way she looks into the camera like she’s studying us and it’s not us looking at her, that now makes it impossible to look at my mother and not wonder whether if she were not so shy and hurt she might have been a painter. How I resent her for not. If Beethoven could write this whole mass while not hearing a single note, what could Bokkie have done if only she tried? Instead of cleaning the house and Hoovering the floors till they shone like mirrors and feeding us all the time or slaving in the stupid church garden. And the flowers, how I can never think of a vagina again without thinking of an iris or a red canna, or how I can barely look at some flowers — lilies and cannas — without thinking of vaginas. And,her
Bleeding Heart,
like me now on top of him, my penis pushed back, down over his buttocks. That is what makes her a great artist, I think: that the world I see will never be the same after I have looked at it through her eyes. Yes, isn’t that what Ma’am means? That the artist has lent us her eyes, to look and see something as she saw it in a way that none of us has seen it, but all of us now can, even if we still see it differently. Oh, how I want to be a Great Artist! To be mentioned in the same breath as Georgia O’Keeffe or Oscar Wilde. Yes, the reviews will say, there is a hint of O’Keeffe in De Man’s early work, but look, by the age of twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine, he had certainly established his own, unique style, which changed the face of creative work the world over.
The rise and fall of his back beneath me tells me he’s fallen asleep. Stroking the shoulders I whisper that I must go. In a sleepy voice he tells me to wait a few weeks before I return. He will let me know when he again thinks it safe. While I search for my pyjamas in the dark, slip my arms into the dressing gown, I wonder whether he has begun to distrust me. Is my assurance through the invocation of Knowles and Stein not reason enough for him to let go of his fear? ‘I love you,’ he whispers, standing naked in the dark behind me at the door, his fingers brushing my neck as I, without answering, leave.
The moment his door shut, I turned and walked down the passage to the first music room. The smell of fresh paint and new linoleum filled the dark. Avoiding the music stands and instrument cases, I felt my way to the window. Beneath my fingers the panel swung open and I edged my body through the opening. From the outside I shut it, taking care to leave a gap into which a finger could later be inserted for re-entry. I removed my slippers, pushing them beneath the tufts of grass overhanging the water duct. Barefoot, I turned right and slunk down the white walls of classrooms, the conservatory, and headed towards the river. Once amongst the poplars I began collecting branches and dry twigs.
At the fort, I whispered Uncle Klaas’s name and dropped the bundle. I heard both of them stir almost at once: grunts, fabric against fabric, limbs creaking, the blanket catching against a piece of wire in the thatched walls. Uncle Klaas mumbled something — either to me or to the man beside him. The black man, whom I had started thinking of as the Silent One, said nothing, barely making a sound. It was too dark on the inside for me to make out the way they slept. In the afternoons, when we got there, no trace remained of them other than the smell of smoke and kaffir Bennie or Mervy commented on. I pretended to ignore the remarks. Or, when the smell was overwhelming, feigned perplexity.
‘You again, Karl.’ I now made out the words, ‘What you whispering for?’ muttered over the sound of his fumbling for the matches. He groaned, sat up and I heard him crawl towards the opening where I’d gone down on my haunches, waiting. From the structure’s mouth, their smell united with the creaking of limbs as Uncle Klaas sat down, the outline of his shape folding in its legs. The Silent One moved invisibly behind him. Soon I could make out both their shapes against the dark inside of the fort. Before Uncle Klaas struck the match, there was pawing at the thatch, a swish, and I knew a clump of the grass my friends and I had painstakingly tied had been extracted from the walls. Piece by piece this place would be dismanded, I knew, and so in the afternoons I would pick more grass, try to fill in the gaps left by their nightly forage. Box and a match in one hand, Uncle Klaas struck the sulphur, holding the tiny flame to the thatch, which immediately danced into flames. He tugged more grass from the wall and I held out some of the smaller twigs. These he held over the flames and then placed the fire right in front of me. Around us the night had gone quiet, only twigs and thatch crackling beneath the filthy white fingers with the long fingernails bordered in grime. The face, illuminated by fire: beard tangled and the one cheek engraved with sand. The Silent One, wrapped in the school’s grey blanket, his brown face dark and still knotted with sleep in the flickering shadows.
Uncle Klaas looked up from the flames, signalled for more wood, and his eyes twinkled like black beads in the yellow light. Devilish eyes. Handing him twigs, I sat outside, my back to the river, facing the two men inside our fort.
‘Up again,’ he said and I grinned. The first time, when I’d brought my blanket, I angrily swore to myself it would be the last. That if they didn’t leave soon, I’d report them. But the night after my stitches were removed I had returned, had woken them and Uncle Klaas had at once sent me to collect twigs — no fuss, no shock or surprise, as if they had been expecting me. Now each time was the same. The Silent One’s face a blank slate, and Uncle Klaas always a little amused. Each time I was there, I tried to get him to speak about himself, to tell me about the Liebenberg family, about why he stopped being a professor and became a tramp. Each time I asked about my late great-grandfather and great-grandmother, he said they had existed in his previous life and that he had nothing to say about them or the university. I said I had seen photographs of him in my great-grandparents’ passage when I was small. That’s a time in his life that was over, he said, he didn’t think of it for it amounted to nothing more than unnecessary baggage. Then I let it go, afraid somehow that my questions would push him to madness. One in each generation. And I felt pity for him, for even as he refused to speak about the Liebenberg family, he was so clearly part of them: a younger — filthy — replica of my Oupa.
‘I came to show you this,’ I said, lifting the implement from my pocket.
Careful to evade his touch, I handed him the stone. A smile, a snigger, plays at the corner of his mouth. His eyes still on the tool in his hand, he tells me to collect more wood. When I return with three thick branches, the Silent One has the implement in his palm. He turns it around, seems to become disinterested, says something in a language I neither know nor understand and hands it back to Uncle Klaas. From below the blanket the Silent One pulls a brown paper bag and tears off a slither to make their zol. First he flattens the paper byrubbing it against the tattered jersey that covers his chest. Once satisfied, the long black fingers dig around in the orange packet of Boxer, spread it on the brown paper. From another crumpled packet his forefinger scoops a tangle of dull green twigs, which he mixes in with the tobacco. This, I knew the first time already, had to be dagga, though I didn’t ask, offered no comment, telling myself that if I were caught down here with tramps and dagga smokers, I would at least be able to say I held no knowledge of what they were smoking. That I had come only because of the pity I felt for my uncle. That I was hoping to convert him to Christianity. If the two tramps don’t tell me it’s dagga, I won’t be responsible. How was I meant to know what dagga looked like, smelt like, anyway?
