Читать книгу The Shallows - Ingrid Winterbach - Страница 4

The time there was sacred. That is how I see it in retrospect. (Is sacred a word commonly occurring in my vocabulary? No.) Whatever happened before or after, that time was sacred. Sacred! I’ll never forget it. It’s engraved on my heart. It was cold. It was raining that day when Willem Wepener and I went to view Jacobus’ body. (You didn’t want to go along. You don’t want to remember him like that, you said.) In the reception area of the undertakers there was a large reproduction of a lioness with her cubs, also several examples of wreaths and two receptionists with expressions of permanent piety. A man took us through the building, out by the back door, through puddles of rainwater, to a small back room (hardly designed for the viewing of bodies). A transparent dark-green chintz Mr Price curtain against one wall. A cement floor, cold. There Jacobus lies, in his coffin. God, as still as death! On Willem’s face an expression of unspeakable sorrow. For a long time he stands motionlessly gazing at the body.

I spend the first night with you so that you won’t have to be on your own. Willem prepares food. He comes in from outside, half-frozen, with provisions. His cheeks are pale, there are dark rings under his eyes. We sit huddled together around the dining-room table. The food and the wine console us. Late at night I shower and at last, half-drunk, crawl between the ice-cold sheets. The day breaks dismayingly soon. I’m still clinging to the night. My first thought: Nothing will ever bring him back. A sacred time, engraved on my heart for ever.

In the course of my life I’ve done irresponsible things. I have at times been dishonest and unfaithful. But I am loyal to those I love. Willem and I are standing in the little back room. With the back of my hand I touch Jacobus’ cold cheek. The flesh does not respond. I touch my fingers lightly to his chest, just below the tip of the breastbone. The flesh feels like clay. It’s as if my fingertips are still primed for the slightest indication of life – the tiniest undulation of the chest – and as if my fingers cannot comprehend the absolute immobility of the body. Next to me Willem stands motionless; I have never seen him so unmoving. For him touching is taboo, he says. He just stands gazing with the expression on his face of unspeakable sorrow.

*

I was born with a cleft palate and a harelip. I have a broad, flattish nose, a narrow forehead and hair as abundant as that of a Catholic saint. During the sixth to tenth week of pregnancy the bones and sutures of the upper jaw, nose and mouth are supposed to knit, to form the palate and upper lip. When that does not happen, the baby is born with a cleft palate and a harelip. I suspect that I was an unwanted pregnancy, and that my mother had tried to abort me during the embryonic phase. I was never told this in so many words, it is something I discerned intuitively. On account of the cleft palate and harelip I couldn’t drink properly as a baby and I had trouble learning to talk. As a result I was a furious and frustrated child. Which didn’t make it any easier for my mother – nineteen years old, with an unwelcome, unprepossessing baby, and a girl on top of that. I was operated upon. The cleft palate was repaired. But the scar of the corrected harelip is more prominent than it should be. People of both sexes find me sexually either irresistible or repulsive.

After Jacobus’ death I packed my bags, let my house, and left for a while. I could not stand staying on in a town where mountain and tree alike are indifferent to every human vicissitude.