The moment the metal box speaks her name, Amor knows it’s happened. She’s been in a tense, headachy mood all day, almost like she had a warning in a dream but can’t remember what it is. Some sign or image, just under the surface. Trouble down below. Fire underground.
But when the words are said to her aloud, she doesn’t believe them. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. No, no. It can’t be true, what her aunt has just told her. Nobody is dead. It’s a word, that’s all. She looks at the word, lying there on the desk like an insect on its back, with no explanation.
This is in Miss Starkey’s office, where the voice over the Tannoy told her to go. Amor has been waiting and waiting for this moment for so long, has imagined it so many times, that it already seems like a fact. But now that the moment has really come, it feels far away and dreamy. It hasn’t happened, not actually. And especially not to Ma, who will always, always be alive.
I’m sorry, Miss Starkey says again, covering her big teeth behind thin, pressed-together lips. Some of the other girls say Miss Starkey is a lesbian, but it’s hard to imagine her doing anything sexy with anyone. Or maybe she did once and has been permanently disgusted ever since. It’s a sorrow we all have to bear, she adds in a serious voice, while Tannie Marina trembles and dabs at her eyes with a tissue, though she has always looked down on Ma and doesn’t care at all that she’s dead, even if she isn’t.
Her aunt goes downstairs with her and waits outside while Amor has to go back to the hostel to pack her suitcase. She’s been living here for the past seven months, waiting for what hasn’t happened to happen, and every second of that time she’s hated these long, cold rooms with their linoleum floors, but now that she has to leave, she doesn’t want to go. All she wants to do is lie down on her bed and fall asleep and never, never wake up. Like Ma? No, not like Ma, because Ma is not asleep.
Slowly, she puts her clothes into the suitcase and then carries it down to the front of the main school building, where her aunt is standing, looking into the fishpond. That’s a big fat one, she says, pointing into the depths, have you ever seen such a big goldfish? And Amor says that she hasn’t, even though she can’t see which fish her aunt is pointing at and none of it is real anyway.
When she gets into the Cressida, that isn’t real either, and as they float down the winding school drive the view from the window is a dream. The jacarandas are all in bloom and the bright purple blossoms are gaudy and strange. Her own voice sounds echoey, as if somebody else is speaking, when they get to the main gate and turn right instead of left, and she hears herself ask where they are going.
To my house, her aunt says. To get Uncle Ockie. I had to rush out last night when it, you know, when it happened.
(It did not happen.)
Tannie Marina glances sideways with little mascara-rimmed eyes, but still no reaction from the girl. The older woman’s disappointment is almost palpable, like a secret fart. She could have sent Lexington to fetch Amor from school, but instead she has come personally, because she likes to be helpful in a crisis, everyone knows that. Behind her round face with its kabuki make-up, she is hungry for drama and gossip and cheap spectacle. Bloodshed and treachery on the TV is one thing, but here real life has served up an actual, thrilling opportunity. The terrible news, delivered in public, in front of the headmistress! But her niece, the useless plump lump, has hardly said a word. Really, there is something wrong with the child, Marina has noticed it before. She blames it on the lightning. Ag, shame, she was never the same after that.
Have a rusk, her aunt tells her crossly. They’re on the back seat.
But Amor doesn’t want a rusk. She has no appetite. Tannie Marina is always baking things and trying to feed them to people. Her sister Astrid says it’s so she doesn’t have to be fat alone, and it’s true their aunt has published two cookbooks of teatime treats, popular with a particular kind of older white woman, much in evidence these days.
Well, Tannie Marina reflects, at least the child is easy to speak to. She doesn’t interrupt or argue and gives the impression she’s paying attention, all that’s required. It’s not a long drive from the school to where the Laubschers live in Menlo Park, but time feels stretched today and Tannie Marina talks in emotive Afrikaans the whole way, her voice low and confiding, full of diminutives, even though her motives are not benign. It’s the usual topic, about how Ma has betrayed the whole family by changing her religion. Correction, by going back to her old religion. To being a Jew! Her aunt has been extremely vocal on this subject for the past half a year, ever since Ma fell ill, but what is Amor supposed to do about it? She’s just a child, she has no power, and anyway what’s so wrong about going back to your own religion if you want to?
She tries not to listen, by focusing on something else. Her aunt wears little white golfing gloves when she drives, an affectation from who knows where, or maybe just a fear of germs, and Amor fixates on the pale shapes of her hands, moving on the steering wheel. If she can keep focused on the hands, the shape of them, with their short, blunt fingers, she will not have to listen to what the mouth above the hands is saying, and then it will not be true. The only thing that is true is the hands, and me looking at the hands.
. . . The truth is that your mother gave up Dutch Reformed and went back to the Jewish thing just to spite my little brother . . . It’s so she won’t be buried on the farm, next to her husband, that’s the actual reason . . . There’s a right way and a wrong way and I’m sorry to say your mother chose the wrong way . . . Well, anyhow, Tannie Marina sighs as they arrive at the house, let’s just hope God forgives her and she is at peace now.
They park in the driveway under the awning, with its beautiful green and purple and orange stripes. Beyond it, a diorama of white South Africa, the tin-roofed suburban bungalow made of reddish face brick, surrounded by a moat of bleached garden. Jungle gym looking lonely on a big brown lawn. Concrete birdbath, a Wendy house and a swing made from half a truck tyre. Where you, perhaps, also grew up. Where all of it began.
Amor follows her aunt, not quite on the ground, a few centimetres above it, a giddy little gap between her and things, as she heads for the kitchen door. Inside, Oom Ockie is mixing himself a brandy-and-Coke, his second of the morning. He has recently retired from his government job as a draughtsman in Water Affairs and his days are listless. He jumps to guilty attention when he’s bust by his wife, sucking on his nicotine-stained moustache. He’s had hours to dress himself properly, but is still wearing tracksuit pants and a golfing shirt and slipslops. A blockish man with thinning hair Brylcreemed sideways across his scalp. He gives Amor a clammy hug, very awkward for both of them.
Sorry about your mother, he says.
Oh, that’s okay, Amor says, and immediately starts to cry. Will people be sorry for her all day because her mother has become that word? She feels ugly when she cries, like a tomato breaking open, and thinks that she must get away, away from this horrible little room with its parquet floor and barking Maltese poodle and the eyes of her aunt and uncle sticking into her like nails.
She hastens past Oom Ockie’s gloomy fish tank, up the passage, its walls marked with a dimpled-plaster effect popular in these parts at this time, to the bathroom. No need to dwell on how she washes away her tears, except to mention that, even as she continues to snivel, Amor opens the door of the medicine cabinet to look inside, something she does in every home she visits. Sometimes what you find is interesting, but these shelves are full of depressing items like denture cream and Anusol. Then she feels guilty for having looked and to absolve herself has to count the objects on each shelf and rearrange them into a more pleasing order. Then she thinks that her aunt will notice and disarranges them again.
On her way back down the passage Amor pauses at the open bedroom door of her cousin Wessel, youngest and largest of Tannie Marina’s brood, and the only one still living at home. He’s already twenty-four but ever since finishing the army he’s done nothing except sit around at home, attending to his stamp collection. Apparently he has some problem with going out into the world. He’s depressed, according to his father, and his mother says that he’s finding his way. But Pa has voiced the opinion that his nephew is just lazy and spoiled and should be forced to do some work.
Amor doesn’t like her cousin, and especially not at this moment, with those big, blobby hands and his pudding-bowl haircut, and the suspect way he says the letter S. He would never make eye contact anyway, but he hardly notices her right now, because his stamp album is open on his lap, and he’s peering through a magnifying glass at one of the favourites of his collection, the set of three commemorating Dr. Verwoerd, issued a few months after the great man’s murder.
What are you doing here?
Your mother picked me up from school. Then she came to get your father and some groceries.
Oh. And now you’re going home?
Yes.
Sorry about your mother, he says, and glances at her at last. She can’t help it, she starts crying again and has to dry her eyes on her sleeve. But his attention is back on the stamps.
Are you very sad? he asks absently, still not looking at her.
She shakes her head. At this moment it’s true, she doesn’t feel anything, just vacant.
Did you love her?
Of course, she says. But even in response to this question, nothing stirs inside. Makes her wonder if she’s telling the truth.
Half an hour later, she sits on the back seat of Ockie’s old Valiant. Her uncle, who has dressed in his church outfit, brown trousers and yellow shirt and shiny shoes, sits jug-eared in the driver’s seat in front of her, smoke from his cigarette scribbling across the windscreen. Next to him his wife, who has freshened up and sprayed herself with Je T’aime and brought along a bag of baking supplies from her kitchen. At this moment they are driving past the cemetery on the western edge of the city, where a small crowd stands around a hole in the ground, and nearby is the Jewish cemetery where very soon, but no, don’t think about that, and don’t look at the graves, though you can’t help seeing the sign for Heroes’ Acre, but who are the heroes, nobody ever explained, is Ma a hero now, don’t think about that either, and then you are sinking into that horrible zone of cement and car washes and dirty-looking blocks of flats on the other side. If you stick with the usual road you will soon leave the city behind, but you can’t take the usual road today because it goes past Atteridgeville and there is trouble in the township. Trouble in all the townships, it’s being muttered about everywhere, even with the State of Emergency hanging over the land like a dark cloud and the news under censorship and the mood all over a bit electrified, a bit alarmed, there is no silencing the voices that talk away under everything, like the thin crackle of static. But whose are they, the voices, why can’t we hear them now? Shhh, you’ll hear them, if you pay attention, if you will only listen.
. . . We are the last outpost on this continent . . . If South Africa falls, Moscow will be drinking champagne . . . Let’s be clear about it, majority rule means communism . . .
Ockie switches off the radio. He’s not in the mood for political speeches, much nicer to look at the view. He imagines himself one of his Voortrekker ancestors, rolling slowly into the interior in an ox-wagon. Yes, there are those who dream in predictable ways. Ockie the brave pioneer, floating over the plain. A brown-and-yellow countryside passes outside, dry except for where a river cuts through it, under a huge Highveld sky. The farm, which is what they call it, though it is in no meaningful way a real farm, one horse and a few cows and some chickens and sheep, is out there among the low hills and valleys, halfway to the Hartbeespoort Dam.
Off to one side, over a fence, he can see a group of men with a metal detector, watching some native boys dig holes in the ground. This whole valley once belonged to Paul Kruger and there are persistent rumours that two million pounds in Boer War gold have been buried somewhere under these stones. So, dig here, dig there, hunting the wealth of the past. It’s greedy, but even this gives him a nostalgic glow. My people are a valiant, durable bunch, they outlasted the British and they will outlast the kaffirs too. Afrikaners are a nation apart, he really believes that. He doesn’t understand why Manie had to marry Rachel. Oil and water don’t mix. You can see it in their children, fuckups, the lot of them.
In this perception, at least, he and his wife are in harmony. Marina never liked her sister-in-law. Everything about the arrangement was wrong. Why couldn’t her brother just marry into his own tribe? I made a mistake, he said, and you pay for your mistakes. Manie was always stupid-stubborn. To go against the wishes of his own family for somebody like that, vain and proud, who of course dropped him in the end. Because of sex. Because he just couldn’t keep his hands off. An activity Marina herself has never much cared for, except that one time in Sun City with the mechanic, but aieee, be quiet, don’t bring that up now. Always my brother’s downfall, ever since he started shaving he turned into a little goat, having fun and causing trouble, till he made his mistake and then everything changed. The mistake is somewhere out there now, doing his military service. They sent a message to him this morning, he’ll only get home tomorrow.
Anton will only be home tomorrow, she tells Amor, then falls to adjusting her lipstick in the visor mirror.
They arrive at the turn-off from the wrong side and Amor has to get out to open the gate and close it again behind the car. Then they are bumping along a rough gravel road, rocks sticking up in places, scraping metallically at the undercarriage. The noise seems heightened to Amor, biting into her. Her headache is worse. While they were on the open road she could almost pretend she was nowhere, drifting along. But now all her senses are telling her they’re about to arrive. She doesn’t want to get to the house, because when she does it will obviously be true that something has happened, that something has changed in her life and will never change back again. She doesn’t want the road to do what it does, go under the pylons and head towards the koppie, she doesn’t want it to go up the rise, she doesn’t want to see the house in the dip on the other side. But there it is, and she sees it.
Never liked it much. A weird little place to start with, even when her grandfather first bought it, who would build in that style out here in the bush? But then when Oupa drowned in the dam and Pa inherited it he started adding rooms and outbuildings that had no style at all, though he called them vernacular. No logic to his plans, but according to Ma it was because he wanted to cover up the original art deco, which he thought looked effeminate. Oh, what rubbish, said Pa, my approach is practical. Supposed to be a farm, not a fantasy. But just look at how it ended up. A big mishmash of a place, twenty-four doors on the outside that have to be locked at night, one style stuck on another. Sitting out here in the middle of the veld, like a drunk wearing odd bits of clothing.
Still, thinks Tannie Marina, it’s ours. Don’t look at the house, think about the land. Useless ground, full of stones, you can do nothing with it. But it belongs to our family, nobody else, and there’s power in that.
And at least, she says aloud to Ockie, the wife is out of the picture at last.
Then, oh God, remembers the child in the back seat. Have to watch what you say, Marina, especially for the next couple of days, till the funeral is over. Speak in English, it will keep you in check.
Don’t understand me wrong, she says to Amor. I respected your mother.
(No, you didn’t.) But Amor doesn’t say it aloud. She has become very rigid in the back of the car, which is finally coasting to a stop. Ockie has to park a little way down the drive, because there are too many other cars in front of the house, unfamiliar cars mostly, what are they doing here? Already there is an inward pull of people and events, drawn towards the Ma-shaped hole at the heart. As she gets out, closing the door with a thunk, Amor sees one car in particular, a long dark one, and the heaviness of the world gets worse. Who is the driver of that car, why is he parked outside my house?
I told the Jewish people not to take her yet, Tannie Marina announces. So that you can say goodbye to your mother.
At first Amor doesn’t understand. Crunch crunch crunch goes the gravel. Through the front windows she can see a crowd of people in the lounge, a dense fog of them, and at the centre is her father, bowed over in a chair. He’s crying, she thinks, then it comes to her instead, No, he’s praying. Crying or praying, it’s hard to tell the difference with Pa these days.
Then she does understand and thinks, I cannot go in. The driver of that dark car is waiting inside so that I can say goodbye to my mother and I can’t go through the door. If I go through the door it will be true and my life will never be the same. So she delays outside, while Marina clip-clops importantly ahead with her bags of ingredients, Ockie shuffling in behind her, and then she drops her suitcase on the steps and shoots around the side of the house, past the lightning conductor and the gas canisters in their concrete alcove in the wall and over the back patio where Tojo the Alsatian lies sleeping in the sun, purple balls showing between his legs, over the lawn, past the birdbath and the kapok tree, past the stable buildings and the labourers’ cottages behind, running towards the koppie.
Where is she? She was right behind us.
Marina can’t believe what that damn fool girl has done.
Ja, Ockie confirms and then, eager to contribute, repeats it. Ja!
Ag, she’ll come back. Marina is in no mood for indulgence. Let these people take the poor woman away now. The chance is wasted on the child.
The driver of the long car, Mervyn Glass, has been sitting for the past two hours in the kitchen, wearing his yarmulke, waiting on the instruction of the bossy woman, the sister of the bereaved, who is now telling him to get moving. This is a very difficult family, he can’t work out what’s going on, but doesn’t appear to mind. Waiting in respectful silence is an essential part of the job and he has developed the capacity to simulate deep calm while experiencing none of it. In his core, Mervyn Glass is a frantic man.
Now he springs to his feet. He and his helper proceed to remove the mortal remains of the deceased from the upstairs bedroom. This involves a stretcher and a body bag and a final display of anguish from the spouse, who clutches at his dead wife and implores her not to go, as if she is leaving of her own volition and can be persuaded to change her mind. Nor is this uncommon, as Mervyn will tell you if you ask him. He has seen all of it before many times, including the curious pull that a corpse exerts, drawing people towards it. By tomorrow already this will have changed, the body will be long gone and its permanent absence covered over with plans, arrangements, reminiscences and time. Yes, already. The disappearance begins immediately and in a certain sense never ends.
But in the meantime there is the body, the horrible meaty fact of it, the thing that reminds everyone, even people who didn’t care for the dead woman, and there are always a few of those, that one day they shall lie there too, just like her, emptied out of everything, merely a form, unable even to look at itself. And the mind recoils from its absence, cannot think of itself not thinking, the coldest of voids.
Fortunately she isn’t heavy, the sickness hollowed her out, and it’s easy to get her down the stairs and around the challenging angle at the bottom and along the passage to the kitchen. Out the back, the bossy sister orders them, down the side of the house, don’t carry it past the guests. If the visitors are aware of this final departure, it’s only in the sound of the long car starting up outside, the note of the engine a fading vibration on the air.
Then Rachel is gone, truly gone. She came here as a pregnant bride twenty years ago and hasn’t left since, but she will never walk back in through the front door again.
In the hearse, ...
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