The Rowing Lesson (19 page)

You don’t know any card game, not even rummy? asks the Old Man. No, you answer, becoming a no-man yourself. But I like all the fish in the sea, salt water up my long nose, and tap dancing so hard that my knees knock and the chandelier falls down. Talking about chandeliers, you’re now in the lounge with the tinkling, winking light above you, and the brothers swirling, Fresh Face and First Prize playing mock rugby inches away from the table with the honeyed
taiglach
and crystallized fruit in cut- glass bowls. The
taigel
sticks to your teeth and your hands and you’re sorry you touched the damn thing. Where’s the bloody tablecloth when you need it? The embroidered baskets and bows that you left under the bush at Ebb ’n Flow must be stitched to the bottom of the river by now.

The Old Man rocks back, a glass of brandy in his hand, and he sees a screw in the centre of the dangling, maddening chandelier. He reaches up, and his arm is longer than you ever imagined, with an opposable thumb a monkey’s monkey would be proud of. I wonder what that is, he says, twisting the screw. There’s a cracking sound, and a stupendous crash as the crystals fall, an avalanche of glass which misses the Old Man’s cranium by a sip of brandy, the whisker of a mantis.

It’s all my fault, you’re thinking, staring into the pile of broken glass. I said it. I brought the house down just by talking. Why did I have to tell the Old Man about tap dancing?

His sons are all strangling their laughs, lifting their faces to the giant hole in the ceiling, from whence cometh our help. A stream of smoke pours through Stella’s nose. She tilts her head, trying to untwist the smile in her lips. You’re counting the seconds before the Old Man says NO! And then, NO! But he’s quiet, as the houseboy comes in with a broom and a dustpan to clean up the ruins.

The smell of a bad joke is in the air, all that broken glass clinking and clattering as Sam, the houseboy, sweeps and sweeps. The crystals that fell didn’t fall on us, thank God. Mother Bun is dusting the Old Man’s shoulders looking for slivers of glass, specks of glass, tiny crumbs that can cut you to pieces. She’s chattering and so is Stella, lucky birds as they circle the Old Man, who still isn’t talking. The rest of the family dragon is lying on a couch, six long legs in a row, or is it four? There’s hissing about you and Stella and how you stepped on the chandelier instead of the wrapped-up glass, putting the cart before horse, Charlotte before Stella, tap dancing before cricket. Did anyone say cricket? Because there’s one chirping behind the curtain and crunch, the orange-and-black cat just ate it, cricket legs cracking in its mouth, folded cricket wings snapping like mangled umbrellas.

The frogs are out on the edges of the lagoon and there’s a moon in your eyes when you look at Stella laughing into the hole above your heads. I’m glad it fell down, she says. I never liked it anyway. Your heart is a bubble rising, a balloon on a string in her hands. You lead and I’ll follow. She takes your hand and you twirl like a girl.

You lead and I’ll follow.

Chapter 15

Please accept my heartiest congratulations and very best wishes. You gave us all a wonderful surprise with your high marks and made us very happy and proud of you and your achievements. I am enclosing a small cheque for a celebration or to pay for any medical instruments you may be buying or needing.

Permit me also to put in writing some of my thought, anxieties and hopes for your future. Sir Lionel Whitby defines the “Ideal Medical Student” and for that matter the “Ideal Medical Practioner” as “Cultured, broadly educated in Humanities, Intelligent, Humane and Sympathic, and above all one who will love his profession as well as his fellow men, together with all their weaknesses, joys and sorrows.”

I am sure you possess all these good qualities and you will be a blessing to Humanity, but I have always found that you suffer from an inferiority complex, you always get in with the best, in the finest positions, but you are also kept down in spite of your superior knowledge, your experience, you are sometimes pushed aside in account of your kind nature and humble disposition. Now when you have proved yourself I hope that that inferiority complex will disappear.

I find that the General Practioner or what we used to call the “family doctor” who qualify in South Africa is found wanting. Very few doctors are born “General Practioners,” the rest grope blindly in the dark, in spite of the fact that some of them possess superior knowledge and are far above the average. In England, on the other hand this handicap or drawback is not so prominent. The average English General Practioner possesses polish, manner and poise, the English Doctor’s bedside manner is well known and appreciated, they may be born doctors, but I understand students in the Medical School in England receive training, they go out with a General Practioner and acquire the special knowledge and practice.

I would therefore suggest that you try and get in with a General Practioner, work with him and get the experience and the manner of a General Practioner in England. I am not sure whether London itself would prove a good place for that type of experience you require, as the “Panel” system may somewhat reduce the qualities the English doctor displays, but a provincial town or even Scotland may prove a good field, and I am sure you will be able to fit in, in a position. Needless to say any expense attached to it will be borne by me in full. I won’t say anything about Stella, you know her best, but I feel sure that it may have a great influence on your future, and the sacrifice of a month or two may be worthwhile. I believe that to acquire the experience I am suggesting would be of a greater benefit to you than any special course you might take up.

I hope then you will not mind an old man’s heart to heart talk, and will forgive me if I am intruding, but I mean the best for all concerned.

Stella climbs into Wolfie’s boat. She’s your bride of two days ago, and there’s a dot of confetti caught in the up draught of her red hair. She doesn’t know anything about the Old Man’s English letter, in its brown envelope with a love stamp, a man and woman caught in profile, their faces floating above the sea, staring at a lost star. You read the letter, and you looked at the stamp and couldn’t tell which was which, love or the war, England or South Africa. You read it again and then you folded it carefully, under your socks, remembering your own father, Joseph Klein, Merchant of Quality. He couldn’t write like the Old Man but he had the milk of human kindness flowing in his veins. But the Old Man was trying in his own bossy way, wasn’t he? England’s not quite out of the question, I might add.

Stella’s wearing a brown tweed skirt and a jersey the colour of butterscotch toffee, all things from her father’s shop, part of her grand trousseau. Her lips are a flare of scarlet, against the tangle of bushes, the tall reeds and the sulky sky. It’s not summer and nobody’s slipping into the water. There’s a couple in the boat with you, Margie and Ike, a marriage as new and shiny as yours, rings gleaming, faces stunned with hope, and loss of hope, all the todays and tomorrows packed in tight, making the little vessel sit low in the water.

You’re on honeymoon at the Wilderness, a freshly baked groom to Stella’s pointed bride. The land is all yours, each twist of the Touw river carrying your life’s blood. A long-necked black bird lands on a bare branch, and it’s your heart he’s standing on, caught in the V of the tree. I’m the captain! you shout at Stella as she stands and trembles, afraid of falling into the water, or the sky falling into the tree, or the tree collapsing under the weight of the bird. Sit down, for Chrissake! She’s lighting a cigarette under her arm, into the wind. Margie says, She can’t swim. Stella blows smoke into the sky. No, she says, No, I can’t. You’ll drown your cigarettes, you say. You’ll pour water down the wrong end of the chimney.

Here’s where J.L.B. Smith might have brought his boat, all the way down the Serpentine. You know the coelacanth chappie, the man who’s swimming all the way back to the beginning? Of course it’s a sea fish but we can pretend. Have you ever been to Ebb ’n Flow? Ike says no, and you dip the oars and lift them, you dip them and lift them, and the boat makes a soft pleat in the water.

You’re under the pylons of the railway bridge for two strokes and a breath and then it’s in front of you, as you lean back towards Ebb ’n Flow. You reach forward, into the past, then pull your arms and the boat back into the longer future, the older beaches. The canvas tents at the municipal campsite are ghost-grey, and spotted with mould, and nobody’s there. A big tree stretches its top branches over the river. A long rope hangs from it into the water. Simon and I are taking turns at the gnarled base of the tree. Simon goes first, his cockeyed smile the best thing the river has ever seen. There’s a whoop before he lets go and dive bombs into the water. Then he’s out of the water helping me, showing me how to hold the rope high up, and climb as far up as I can at the base of the tree so that the swing over the river takes me far and away, past the muddy little beach and the other children. I swing into the light and I’m so pale and bright that it’s impossible to see me. Stella shades her eyes from me, and so do you.

There’s a fine mist that sifts water through your hair, and a rainbow arches over the railway bridge which is now a miniature, with a toy train going over it, puffing toy smoke. Whooo . . . whoooo. The monkeys are all up at the top of the river, you tell Stella, dancing and drinking Scotch, toasting the bride and the groom. The banks are drawing closer and the water is turning to amber. Here’s where the water level used to be. You point up at the long green beards trailing from the branches. That’s lagoon slime caught in the air, from the days when the river was almost up to the sky. Rubbish, Ike says. That’s a tree fungus.

Stella checks her lipstick in her compact and there’s nothing but red. She can’t see me winking back at her, swinging on a strand of Meibomian glands, plonk! into the middle of the mirror, a twinkle in my mother’s eye. Maxie’s here and not here, whispering
Gray’s Anatomy
into your ear. The eyeball is composed of tunics and humours, humics and tuners. Remember the nummular layer and the liquor Morgagni, elixir of death? Stella snaps shut her compact, and you’re back in the boat again, out of the patient’s deathbed. Margie’s leaning out, near the prow, staring at
miggies
skittering across the surface. She’s shy and her brown jersey is thick, so thick that you can’t see her breasts. You almost smack her with the oar. Ike gives you a gentleman’s frown. That’s my wife, my house, my whole life making the boat tip like that. Margie, sit in the middle, it’s my turn to row.

One day I’m going to have my own bloody boat, you say to the monkeys. If you want a turn, you’re going to have to apply for one, in triplicate. The trees are coming closer and closer, as Ike pulls the boat towards the river’s source, its first breath. Ssssh! Stop! Ike pauses, oars akimbo. Stella and Margie sit with their arms folded over their chests, and look at you. You point to the ragged cliff, pocked with holes and stumps of bushes, growing sideways. The buggers are sitting in those holes, and watching us. They’re watching us watch them, and they’re not amused. Sometimes you can see the Knysna
loerie
, a rare tree bird. Today there’s silence. Nothing moves. None of the monkeys have anything to say. The
loeries
are buried in the trees, branch-hopping.

Ike is a land surveyor and he’s been all over the place with his instruments, measuring and looking. He’s climbed the Drakensberg mountains. He’s seen elephants, on horseback. Poor bloody horses, you say and Stella giggles, shifting the plume of smoke between her fingers. You pass the small beach where Gertude scratched her thigh getting out. Stop, you say, but Ike wants to go to the very tippy-top of the river, to the beginning of the beginning. You can’t. It’s far too shallow. We’ll scratch the bottom of Wolfie’s boat.

You’re trying to explain the memories in the orange-brown water, of Maisie and old picnics, the tablecloth and Gertude’s soft skin, your pals chopping up the water as they laughed all the way upstream but no one’s listening. This is becoming honeymoon dreadful, all the actors on stage and no one in the audience, everyone waiting for the show that never begins. You can’t tell Ike or Margie or Stella about the tangled love that’s hanging from the trees. There’s a lump in your throat the size of a river stone.

The war will wash it down. The Bulge was closed months ago, in your summer, their winter. The Germans are toppling all over the place. Stalin just arm wrestled Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta and twisted Roosevelt’s arm so hard that it drove his clavicle straight into his heart and killed him. Churchill almost got eaten by his own black dog. I’m itching to fight, you tell them all.

Margie says, Poor Ike. He can’t go because he’s got bad feet. Look at them, dull knives, flat as pancakes. Silence again, all of you bent forward listening for monkeys. Ike keeps rowing and rowing until the boat gets stuck between this bank and that bank.

Wolfie’s going to kill me, you shout. Look what you buggers have done! There’s a screech of white paint on a long flat rock sitting under the water like a bloody torpedo. All you can do is pull Stella and her cigarettes out of the boat, before the hull cracks and you’re all stuck here forever and ever, at this impossible place where the river ends and there’s nothing to see. The ebb is an eking, a backwards yearning and you can never tell which way the river goes. When the bush started burning, there was nothing before and nothing afterwards, you say to the reeds and Ike’s back, as he helps Margie lift her skirt out of the water.

Stella’s telling everyone about how you took her to the mountain and the cross she couldn’t even see because the mist was so bad. What are we supposed to be looking for, Harry? She slips on a slime-covered stone and almost falls flat on her bum but grabs Ike instead. He steadies her, and leads her onto the pale beach, ringed by giant yellowwoods and stinkwoods. Margie’s smiling at you, and gosh, her big speckled eyes and her brown hair are old friends. She grabs your arm and her hand is so big that it wraps around your Humeral Region like a tourniquet, slowing the blood to your heart. This is a bridal bower! Margie says, looking at the ferns higher than your head, the ancient trees with their mottled trunks. Where time begins, you whisper, and suddenly her hand on your arm drops. There. Down. To the left. Careful. The words make a circle like a silent O. She can’t tell what you’re thinking. Her eyes are on Ike, who’s right behind you, a gemsbok waving his horns, pawing at the ground with those ridiculous feet.

There’s the crisp smell of cigarette smoke in the air as Stella leans against a knot in a tree, her arms closed over her chest. Hey! I’m over here. You brush past the gemsbok to get to her. The beach is much smaller than it used to be. We used to have picnics. Now it’s so overgrown you can hardly sit down. You told me about the picnics. Stella picks a leaf from your collar. A hundred times.

There’s a twig cracking, a muffled thud behind you. The buffalos are making a bed, Stella says. You have to inhale her last breath in order to hear. Gemsbok, you answer. Look at the twist of the horns. There’s not much space between you and the red-hot coal glowing between Stella’s fingertips. You take the cigarette, crunch it, and grind it into the ground between her feet and yours. Now they’re back in the boat, Stella says, her voice soft. Over there! But you don’t turn your head. You don’t want to hear the wobble in the water as Ike presses against Margie, as Margie lifts her eyes to the leaves, sinking into the sky without birds.

They’re wrestling inside their clothes. All their buttons are locked. Their shoelaces are so tight, their eyes are bulging out of their heads. Stella’s telling you this, fumbling for her du Mauriers. You catch her hand and bite her little finger. When she screams, you cover her mouth and kiss it, pinning her head against the tree, the rest of her slowly slipping down until she’s below you, so far down that she’s the size of a nice brown hen, a chicken for the Sabbath. You bury your head in her feathers and she pecks at the air in the middle of your ear. Ouch! You reach up and she almost lights another cigarette but you grab her hand and hold it between you like a trophy, as you lean towards her and kiss her properly, without words, or smoke, before God created light or dark. There is no sound but the drip of the river and it comes to you then, you cannot heal the sick, or bring back the dead but you can hear the beginning of the world. You follow the beat of Stella’s blood, the gush of fluids in her bowel, her kidneys flushing the tea she drank for breakfast, in the little cottage facing the lagoon. At last she’s swimming in your waters, tasting your salts with the tip of her tongue. You touch her face. The sky turns and she’s dark in your hands, the colour of her own soot. Her white skin with its cinnamon freckles is now ash brown, with shifting white spots, so many spots that you can’t keep counting them. Maxie’s laughing, because you lost the bet. You gave up, old chap.