Читать книгу Heartfruit - Ingrid Wolfaardt - Страница 7

He gets up to listen. The words mean nothing to him. He returns to the boy in the bed, who lies crying under Ouma’s blanket. They lie under the blanket and their pupils enlarge in the dark, pupils darker than burnt wood.

“Boetie, I’m scared.”

Isak pulls his brother closer and counts the lines of the shutters that fall on the bed, lines of light and dark. He scratches Danie’s back and the harsh cadence does not touch him, nor the jarring sounds that fill the spaces around them, separating them for the man and woman who belong to another world.

Pressing in his stomach is a doll with a square head. A doll with holes for eyes and a slash for a mouth and his brother hugs the stick figure of a doll while Isak rolls his eyes to see Jesus on the wall above them, walking on the water.

* * *

The dog, Kalbas, with the smiling face, is shivering. He pricks up his ears and sits at the door whining. It is cold. He unlocks the door and they walk out, boy and dog, into the garden with its graveyard trees, pointing heavenward. The dog whimpers, his tail between his legs and Isak frowns, rubbing his eyes with his fists to see better.

In the middle of the lawn is a round object, shining, the size of a small plane, balancing on insect-like legs, glowing like a firefly. It makes no sound, vibrating gently, and Isak is not scared, just curious as the object spins faster and faster, ascending without a sound. It floats towards the mountains and the moon. He follows it until it becomes a pinprick of light. The dog licks his hand. He lies down on his bed but he cannot sleep, nor the dog that will not come into the room again.

Kalbas sits on the stoep and barks at the moon and the memory of the night.

* * *

Dominee reads Psalm 140. He prays for rain and forgiveness. He asks God’s blessing upon the valley and its people, people like them. Ouma and Oupa are tired. They climb into their bed that went to and came back from Bechuanaland. Just before midnight the first quake comes, hard and devastating. It roars like a river in flood under the earth’s crust, pure energy that rocks and shakes everything and everybody. The mountains on the southern side of the valley burst into flames as massive boulders roll into the village, igniting the veld into a hellish scene.

At first Ouma and Oupa hear the rattling of windowpanes. Then their wedding portrait, nailed above their heads tips off the wall, smashing on the bed’s iron frame, splintering into hundreds of slivers of glass, which pierce their skin, as frail as shattered shells.

The old age home totters from side to side. The walls buckle under the invisible streams and in the confusion they cling to each other, for there is no other to cling to.

The top storey collapses, flattening the ground floor.

Isak awakes as the christening mug of Ouma and Oupa flies off the shelf and breaks. He feels the world moving beneath him and he is frightened.

Above him his father reaches out to pick him up but the damaged hand is too weak.

“Leave me, Pappa, I can walk.”

He feels for the hairpin in his pocket as he follows his father.

Outside his mother is holding Danie and the whole world is turning and in flames. He looks into the sky where the moon is orange and perfectly still. The Southern Cross lies upside down, caught in the branches of the deltoidia.