Читать книгу Heartfruit - Ingrid Wolfaardt - Страница 9

“Isak.”

He opens his eyes to see Danie and the doctor watching over him.

“I’ve told Amelie that you’re fine, just fine, a fall over a little wall, that’s all.” Danie speaks slowly, “Nothing to worry about, really. But she insists on coming. Maybe when you are feeling better you can speak to her. Reassure her that you are under good care.”

Twice he has died. He wants to laugh but all he can do is machine-breathe. The ceiling is grey as the sky outside his window, grey as the skin of Danie. There is a hole in his head. Under the bandage his skull has broken, that he remembers too. He tries to raise an arm but it lies dead under the sheet. He tries the other arm connected to the drip, but it is also dumb.

“It’s not neccessary, everything is under control.” Someone said that. He wants to tell them that nothing is under control. That everything is on the verge of chaos. He needs to get money and fast otherwise he might as well lie here and die for good, but money for what? Desperately, he tries to talk but a nurse removes the respirator, pulling the pipe out of his throat like a fish line. Panic-stricken he breathes in short spurts, eyes on the computer screen above his bed, watching his heart rate shoot above the line. Then a mask is fitted over his face. He inhales the pure oxygen, forgetting the pressing question for another.

“Am I alive?”

No one replies.

He makes noises in the mask and Danie comes closer to hear better. “You fell at my house, in the garage.”

“I was busy dying …”

But Danie cannot understand and the doctor gestures to him not to speak.

Danie continues, explaining as to a child. “You were travelling from Paris to Rotterdam. We were having supper when you fell into the underground garage, that’s where the dogs found you.”

“Amelie, I must speak to Amelie.” The room spins, engulfing him in nausea.

His brother leans over him and the cross swings in and out of his vision “Easy, easy … you were on a business trip to see clients.”

What the hell am I doing here with you? he asks in his mind.

Danie senses his question, pulling back as though slapped. “I invited you, I wanted to see you.”

“Enough.” The doctor leads Danie behind the screen.

Isak can see their shadows in the screen’s folds. The answer to his question comes up in his mind. He has been entrusted to find money that will save them, otherwise all is lost. It is as though the fall is not only a fall to the ground but a fall from grace. A final fall into failure that makes him escape the responsibility he carries so heavily. It is now out of his hands. The fall has taken the burden off his shoulders.

Relieved, he closes his mind to it, drifting in a drugged haze to a time of long ago.

* * *

There’s a knock on the door just before sunrise. Someone large leans over his bed. They walk through the house, him tailing his father, brusque and removed. The heads of the lilies have turned brown and at the door are crates with empty bottles.

His father climbs in the bakkie and he does the same. The smiling dog waits for the whistle but there is no whistle. They drive fast, very fast to the hills, his father like a man with a devil inside of him, stopping on the lands behind the hills. Closed vygies wait for the sun. His father pulls the handbrake and climbs out. Here, no one can see them. Isak remains seated, switching on the radio to get rid of the plaintive tune in his head. Without caution his father runs up the hill as fast as he can, up and down, over and over.

The radio’s reports can’t rid him of the woman’s nasal voice of the previous evening. Suddenly the man sinks to his knees, pressing his arms around his chest. A fear wells up inside of Isak. He sits in the cab, silently singing the tune over and over, not sure what to do as pain contorts his father’s face.

Isak watches.

His father hits his chest. Once again he tries to run, his eyes glazed, gasping for breath.

Isak climbs out.

His father falls at his feet, face first. “Enough,” his father murmurs, “enough.” He lies there as the sun strikes the rock. Isak is not sure what to do. Vygies open, changing the veld to purple. Isak bends down. The man is heavy. He grips him under the arms but his weight is too much. Inch by inch he drags him over the flowers. Piece by piece he lifts him onto the seat, his own chest paining, his own muscles contracting in a spasm. His father slumps over the dashboard. He drives flat out. Each stone, each dip in the road seems to pierce the man beside him.

She is waiting in the garage, her hair a mess.

And the doctor’s new Capri is in the driveway, with open doors. The doctor pulls him out.

Isak wants to tell what has happened out there but there is no time for talking. They load his father into the sports car and the doctor spins the wheels. He can hear how the Capri’s low undercarriage scrapes the gravel.

Her lips are drained, goosebumps all over her skin. Both stand barefoot on the stoep, she in a nightie and him in pyjamas. Above the hills they see the sun and the air is scented from the falling blossoms.

“I knew it.” She turns to him reaching for his hand.

But he ignores her, calling the dogs.

“Try to sleep,” she suggests, dropping her hand.

Angrily he walks away, all along the ridge to the rubbish dump. From here he can see far, almost as far as the town. The Capri has turned onto the main road, just a speck, just a suggestion.

He runs his hand over the smiling dog’s fur.

Noises come from the house of heavy things being shifted, voices from the farm barracks, then David’s tractor coming along the ridge, with a trailer. A subdued Danie and Pensie sit on a heap of boxes and rubbish. David backs the trailer to the edge of the dump site and the small boys help him tip.

Isak moves closer to inspect.

There’s the normal rubbish of bottles and broken glasses. Heaps of wilted lilies and a record snapped in two. He digs it out amongst the flowers. It is the record of Nana Mouskouri with the cursed party tune.

* * *

Behind the screen the doctor moves on to old men dribbling into pee pots. From the shouts and swearing, he can make out that their bodies are being wiped down as well. No one wipes his battered body. His urine is piped into a pot.

He opens his eyes a little more. Black flowers come into focus. At the foot of his bed is a uniformed man, holding a bunch of tulips. The nurse clasps them to her chest and there are apologies made for the second fall and for the second death in the ambulance.

Flowers of condolence, flowers of apology, flowers for a funeral.

So he attempts to turn his head as she arranges them on the table but he is unable to, listening as the man explains that there is no colour like black. Tulips such as these were once a rarity. Like pears he thinks, once a rarity, now a commodity.

The man leaves with a sympathetic look and the nurse shifts the screen aside so that he can see out of the window. The highway runs past the window and behind the stream of cars are fields with sheep, weak-legged and woolly. He would cull them all if they were his. He searches for the abrupted story in his jumbled mind, not sure what is real. This room or the space in his head.

* * *

The Ford stops in the garage and his mother is at the wheel. His father gets out quietly and the new maid closes the door for him, the skin slack around his jaw. He smells of Tannie Lettie’s room as he rests his hand on Isak’s shoulder.

* * *

The windmill in the Karoo is broken and there is no one to go. Oom Kalla has gone back to Rhodesia because of the party and Raatjie’s dancing, so Outa Floors must go instead.

This time his father stands on the stoep and his mother waves goodbye to him behind the wheel and Danie next to him. Outa sits on the back with a blanket pulled over his shoulders and his hat tipped forward for the wind.

His father looks past them to the hills. This time there will be no fires along the road or stories of men and sheep. This time Isak drives slowly. He sees his parents in the mirror, a stooped man and a woman hugging herself.

Valley opens up to valley, then vast plains to vast plains and finally mountain upon mountain gathered together on the skirt of the horizon. The Holden knows the road to Bloedrivier as the sheep do that trek next to the road. Men are named by this road. Between the wars, Oom Abes walked this gravel highway up and down for months and years, plucking each and every fluff of wool caught in the barbs, baling and selling it, to buy his first farm in the valley.

At the gate, Outa climbs off, unravelling the twisted chain that keeps the gate locked, then he picks bitou for his hatband as Isak impatiently revs the engine. Danie climbs out and the dogs jump off the back, running ahead of Outa to the windmill and the dry trough.

There are other men in the valley, men who have built their wealth on convict labour and their loyalty to those who govern.

Bleating sheep mill around the pump.

In the beginning the flock is just a flock to Isak, animals that all look the same. Only later will they get names, when each ewe’s unique manner and way are known to them.

They set up camp, near the pump with the broken rod. Outa plaits a shelter of vye and renosterbos while the boys erect the old bell tent.

The old man’s hands and the roots of the plaited bushes move in and out of each other as he speaks to himself. “Ja, ja, Outa remembers this shelter outside, where Outa’s mammie used to cook.”

Isak and Danie move closer to where the old man starts kindling a fire on the floor of the shelter.

“The house was piepklein and built of reeds, not the soft palmiet reed that grows in the river on the grootbaas’s farm, but a reed as thick as a man’s forearm,” he explains. “As kleingoed, we took goats’ dung and clay and kneaded it with our bare feet until it was smooth like bread dough, then we plastered the house inside and out with our hands, smearing it all over the reeds.”

“Didn’t Outa get cold?”

“Not a bit, Basie, not even in winter or the rain. Later, Outa’s mammie made use of cardboard and pieces of canvas after Outa’s dêdda’s death.”

From the shelter you can see the whole world in all directions. Isak spins around and around, stretching out his arms and the dogs turn with him until he feels drunk and falls. He gets up and the world is still turning. There are stars in the sky. Stars the colour of stone.

Outa skewers pieces of sausage and the boys hold them over the flames. The meat tastes of herbs and ash and the stars shoot and spark like a tractor’s exhaust.

“Tell some more.” Danie’s sausage drips fat and the dogs lick the sand.

“Outa was one of sixteen, from one women, Outa’s mammie. Only the kleingoed born after Outa went to school. Outa and Outa’s brother, Arrie and Outa’s sisters had no schooling.”

“Wish it was me,” Isak grumbles. He huddles next to the coals as the sun drops away and the night wind picks up.

“Our tent has holes.” Danie joins him at the fire, unconvinced by Outa’s enthusiasm for the protection offered by the wall.

“Tonight is the night the Basies sleep, doeksag, like the volk, without a bed.” In the dark his cheekbones stand out and his sunken eyes disappear.

“I want to go home.”

“Sissie.” Isak spits sausage skin into the fire where it sizzles and burns.

The ewes call for their young in the dark. A moving mass of bodies searching for each other as jackals call. The dogs prick their ears in response.

“Did the volk have their own farms in Outa’s time?” Isak blows over the coals.

“Ag, just a sliver of land, Basie, for our goats and to keep our animals away from that of the baas.”

“Was Outa’s father a farmer?” Danie lifts his head off his knees with interest.

“Dêdda was the goat herd for the baas.” The old man spits into the fire. “On the sly, Dêdda smoused Dêdda’s own goats where Dêdda could, for an extra lappie, Basie.”

Isak shakes his head disagreeably, “Pappa will never allow that.”

Something moves rapidly through the hot sand. It is a toktokkie duped by the fire to think it is the sun. Danie picks it up and the beetle plays dead, stiffening at his touch. “He’s mine.” He taps the shell. “Jaffie, Jaffie wake up.”

Isak prods it with the stick.

“Boetie, don’t!” Danie knocks the stick from Isak’s hand.

They tumble and roll around the fire. Outa begins to sing in a high voice, clicking each word softly to himself.

“What song was that?” Isak shoves Danie to one side.

“A lullaby that Outa’s mammie used to sing to Outa as a baby.” The old man sings louder and louder.

“Was Outa never ever in school?” Danie waits for the song that goes round and round to end.

“Outa worked like a grootman, Basie … only ten years old was Outa.” He looks at Isak, then he carries on and his voice is different. “Given away to the white folk to care for the boer goats … so Outa travelled up and down, this way and that way as the goat herd. Where the goats went, Outa went.”

“Given away as in taken away?” Isak eyes the beetle in Danie’s hand.

Outa nods. He sits on a half-drum, rhythmically kneading a piece of animal skin with his thumbs. “Booked in with the baas for ten years, Basie. Slept under the kitchen table until Outa became too big for that.” Sighing, he kicks his heels into the sand. “A sixpence a day and shilling in the month was Outa’s pay. The baas mistreated Outa well, Basie. Boere of that time were another breed.”

“How different, Outa?” Isak frowns. “Better or worse?”

“Gall bitter, said with all respect … neeked every day Outa was by the boere.” As an afterthought he adds. “Today’s white folk are tame.” Then he gets up from the fire, taking a spade with him to the tent. The boys follow. Inside the tent he digs three equal-sized trenches in a row, then with the spade he scoops up the glowing coals, dropping them into the hollows, levelling them off with sand.

“Bedtime, kinnertjies.”

They undress, hanging their trousers on wire hooks from the tent pole. Isak notices Outa’s limbs, sinewed and strong, and the old scars that shine white.

Each lies in a warmed hole. The old man is closest to the flap and the boys count stars through the holes in the roof. The beetle lies still in Danie’s hand. Kalbas with the smiling face and the grey whippet lie at the dying embers.

“More stories,” Isak begs, tracing his finger over the stars that make pictures like clouds do.

Outa snorts and spits. “Nooi Visagie would milk her own goats in the kraal, even caught them herself, here behind the back leg.” He lifts his leg up for them to see. “Then the nooi would milk them and Outa had to hold the head and if the goats knocked the bucket over, then the nooi would jump up and neek the daylights out of Outa.” He snaps his fingers, making pitiful noises.

Isak can see the woman in her starched kappie and laced boots, beating Outa.

“The nooi would press Outa’s head between her thighs and beat Outa black and blue.”

Danie places the rigid beetle on top of his blanket. It starts to creep over the squares of material. Calico, satin, velvet, kaffir sheeting.

“The last time the nooi did this to Outa, Outa was caught with his head facing up …” he pauses, “then Outa bit a chunk out of Nooi’s snuifie.”

Isak shoots upright then flops back, overcome by mirth, while Danie giggles hysterically into the blanket until his chest closes. The torch is switched on and they search for his asthma pump as Outa repeats the story.

“Jaffie.” Danie wheezes, shaking his blanket.

Isak shines the torch all over the sand but the beetle is gone. He makes patterns of light on the tent roof, beaming the torch into the eyes of Danie and the old man. The torchlight is so powerful it makes the stars disappear.

He remembers the lullabies his mother used to sing, not for him but for his father.

* * *

Greyness and cold wake him in the ward. It is with disappointment that he finds himself not with the old man. It is his calmness that he craves. To lie in hot sand and study the stars, to hear stories, to live for now without a care in the world is his desire. All the complications of running a business, have been self-made. He has created the mess that he is in. And he will have to find the way out.

Behind the screen Danie is on the phone with his back turned to him so that he will not hear. But one thing that has not been damaged is his hearing. In fact he can hear better than ever before.

“Amelie.” Danie throws a furtive glance over his shoulder, making big eyes as he points to the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

The mask is lifted briefly for him to speak.

“Isak?”

Her voice cuts deep.

“Take it away … take it away.” Weakly, he raises his hand.

Embarrassed, Danie puts the phone down. “Sorry.”

The line makes alpine peaks on the screen.

“We’ll try later.” Danie’s moustache is trimmed in a perfect line above his lip.

They both stare at the black tulips.

The Dutch were breeding black tulips while Van Riebeeck was growing vegetables for scurvy.

Makgemaak … tamed. That is what the uniformed man had said about tulips.

He listens to his breathing, regulating the flow of air. But his heart beats its own rhythm.

* * *

Sheep bleat outside in unison.

Dust that smells of dung hangs over the tent and the old man is missing.

All is still but for the windmill that jerks and whines, pumping water into the trough. Isak pulls on his clothes and the sand hole of Outa has the shape of a man. Something moves on Danie’s blanket, it is the beetle. He unhooks the barbed legs, gently placing it in the matchbox clutched in his brother’s hand. Thoughtfully, he strokes the squares of the blanket with the tips of his fingers and it makes him peaceful inside, even happy.

Seated at the shelter is Outa with a new feather in his hat. The mountains are rumpled like his clothes. All is still but for the windmill and the sheep.

They walk a little way from the camp, heads down, and on the ground there are delicate scribblings. “Rabbit spoor.” Outa traces the spoor with his kierie.

Isak outlines it with his fingers, destroying the patterns in the sand.

“After breakfast, Outa will take the dogs out into the veld, then Outa will show the Basies how to hunt like plaasmanne.”

At the shelter, Danie sits with the open matchbox. “Look, Jaffie came back.” He holds the beetle in the box for them to see.

Outa ties string to the dogs’ collars and the boys hold them back as Outa walks ahead, sweeping his kierie from side to side. The sand is a story of the night. Of birds and insects and animals, intersecting each other like railway tracks. To the boys they look all the same but to Outa and the dogs there are differences that make the old man pause and the dogs strain on their leashes.

Isak is thirsty and Danie is tired of looking at the ground when Outa raises his hand to silence them. The whippet chokes with excitement. Outa’s arm stays up.

Hidden beneath the vyebos is the rabbit. It takes a leap but the whippet is too fast, tipping it in mid air. The rabbit somersaults, landing on its back with the dog at its throat.

“We’ve got him, we’ve got him!” The boys hurdle over the bushes.

Snarling, the dogs bite into the fur. Isak pulls the rabbit from under their paws, holding it high, dancing a little jig while Outa grabs the rabbit firmly by its ears, slitting its throat before throwing it into a bag. Disappointed, the dogs sniff at the bag slung over his back. There is fur around their mouths.

Unleashed they run ahead. The rocks shimmer as the day’s heat increases. Slowly they make their way towards an outcrop. Here they sit in the shade, sucking oranges, while Outa sharpens the blade of the knife.

Danie removes the beetle from the box. He taps the rock three times. The beetle responds, tap, tap, tap. He squeezes a drop of juice onto the rock and the beetle drinks.

“What did Outa eat in those times?” Isak turns to Outa.

“Mammie had a basin, a big white enamel one. Mammie bled the goat into it. Then Mammie would beat the blood like you beat scrambled eggs. After that Mammie cooked it slowly until it became thick porridge and we kleingoed would eat the red custard.” He slides his thumb along the sharpened edge. “That was a lekker meal indeed. There was strength in the blood. We never got sick, not one of the sixteen.”

“Can Outa make us bloedpap?”

Outa packs the knife away and passes the bag with the rabbit to Isak. “Only with a klipspringertjie, Basie. Rabbit blood is too bitter and too thin.”

Isak carries the bag all the way back to the shelter. He can feel the weight of the rabbit against his back and it is nothing in the beginning, but as he walks the rabbit hangs heavy in the bag and he shifts it from shoulder to shoulder.

They open the bag. The rabbit is thinner and smaller than when it was alive. Outa strips the skin and guts it. Danie’s head whips to the side as though someone has smacked him hard in the face, then he walks to the tent, closing the flap behind him, but Isak helps the old man truss the pathetic carcass.

For the rest of the day they lie listlessly in the tent, under the hooked carcass drying in the breeze, watching it change colour above their heads. And the beetle wanders over the tent’s floor, stops, then tap, tap, taps.

Only when the sun and moon hold the corners of the sky together as though it were a newly washed sheet do the boys come out to find Outa roasting the meat for them. The rabbit is tough and dry, tasting of bush.

* * *

It is dark. The lights of the Holden catch the fence as they drive along the sheep track. Hundreds of red eyes flash behind the barbed wire. Outa has had a dop or two. Isak can smell engelasem inside the cab. Outa’s arm rests on the open window and he taps his hand on the cab’s door, tap, tap, tap. Danie is on the back, dangling a long piece of sausage and the dogs follow the Holden with excitement.

He puts his foot down hard on the accelerator and the wheels spin. Outa grabs the dashboard and the fence becomes a blur as Isak shouts, “twenty … thirty … forty.”

Only the whippet keeps up. Kalbas drops back and the sausage flies wildly.

“Forty-two!”

“O Gotta, the fence, Basie!’

Isak slams on the brakes. The Holden shifts sideways, banking into the fence as Danie and the sausage fly off the back and the whippet is on him, wolfing down the raw meat.

“Where’s Jaffie?” The small boy feels his pockets.

Isak swaggers over to the dogs, laughing in amazement. “Forty-two miles per hour!” He pats the whippet. Kalbas sits to one side.

Danie finds the matchbox. Inside is the smashed beetle. “It’s all your fault!” Furiously he dives at Isak, punching him in the stomach.

“Is not.” Isak shoves Danie away from him. The sight of the beetle is stranger than the rabbit. It unsettles him. “Let’s go,” he shouts to Outa, climbing in behind the wheel.

“Won’t!” Danie picks up the box. Kalbas follows him back to camp but the whippet stays with the Holden. Isak watches the small figure disappear into the darkness.

* * *

Danie eats breakfast off a tray, as do the old men in the ward. Isak is fed via pipes. For a moment he is nowhere, the memory of a boy disappearing into the darkness, clearer than the ward around him.

“What does the doctor say?”

Danie lifts the corner of the mask and Isak repeats the question.

“The shoulder ligaments have torn off, so the arm is only being carried by surrounding muscle. Your ribs pierced the left lung, and the hole in your head is what he calls ‘cause for concern’.”

“Will they operate?” He imagines what an operation costs in this country.

“Maybe a steel pen can help for the shoulder but for now, no one can say. It needs to heal like the rest of you, and that takes time.” Danie places the mask back over his face and he is trapped.

Nothing will ever be the same.

Frustrated, he tries to follow a man in the field outside the window with a dog. What must be saved? He tries to lift himself up but to no avail.

The dog in the field is not a sheep dog. Isak can see by the dog’s disinterest. Even the dogs here have forgotten what dogs are meant to be.

But not the dog with the smiling face, bringing the flock home for summer, lead by Outa on foot. Flock, dog and old man trekking all the way along allemansgrond, back to the farm that he cannot forget.

All the nonsense with the dogs started with the Ford parked in the garage and the Holden bakkie with the tractors under the shed’s roof. His father was forbidden to drive after the heart attack. The frustrations of a man encamped and confronted by his own frailty.

A bitch was on heat. A dull, neglected animal with a bloated belly and dangling teats. Her heat spread with the wind through the valley and as the nights passed, dogs headed on footpaths through fields, breaking loose from chains. The dogs collected at the farm of Oom Frans, showing off amongst one another, growling and snapping, while the mangy bitch paraded with a mournful face. He knew the dog. It belonged to one of the workers, one of those animals that knew only beatings.

The stronger dogs got through the fence to cover her and some of the weaker dogs, bored with waiting, drifted off towards the paddocks, sniffing the scent of lambs, their bleating a call to the hunt. But it was more the bitch’s yelping that drove them on.

He thinks about it calmly. It is as though the fall has opened dungeons, closed up for so many years. One of the dogs found an opening in the fence and the rest followed to where the ewes and lambs slept. It was a cold night. The heavens were clear. He went out that night onto the back stoep to look at the stars that had lowered themselves to the earth and the hills were silent.

He did not hear them that night. Perhaps if the wind had blown towards the farm he would have picked up the sound of frightened ewes, running back and forth, forming a laager around the lambs. The dogs broke through, scattering the sheep this way and that and the flock stormed for the dam, empty but for a little water, just enough for them to drink, just enough for them to get caught in the clay. And their hooves stuck and the lambs fell and sank in the shallow water, just enough water to drown them.

The ewes were trapped. The pack of dogs descended in a frenzy onto the dying lambs as they thrashed helplessly. One or two dogs started to bite wildly. It always went that way. Not for hunger but for madness. At the throat, the body, anywhere they could get their teeth into, until the flock lay still.

The madness passed. The dogs trotted home, each dog to his own home. Some climbed into baskets, others dropped down in the sand, exhausted, pieces of bloodied wool around their snouts.

The call came from Oom Frans at sunrise. He heard the phone, then his father opening the clothes cupboard, then the front door closing and his father walking down to the barracks. It was the way things happened, no one questioned it. Your neighbours expected it from you, they would have done the same. It was just another thing he expected, like all the other things it is what he knew, that is until she came and turned everything upside down.

His father cleaned them out, every dog, whether it was a puppy or an old dog whose teeth had loosened and yellowed with age. All were shot, even the forgotten dog of Katjie at Poppenshuis. He was in bed on the back stoep when he heard the shots from the hunting rifle, the rifle with the silver filigree work.

Kalbas was in his room on the mat, sharp of mind and body when his father whistled as he came up the hill, just a single whistle and Kalbas pricked up his ears, traipsing through the open door. There were two shots. A shot for Kalbas and a shot for the whippet, right there in the basket, under the camphor trees.

His mobile phone rings. Danie answers it. “Amelie.”

He loves her name. He wishes he can tell her that, that he loves her and her name. She can look into his head. It saves him from speaking. Words are clumsy offerings for the pictures in his mind and her thoughts read his pictures perfectly.

He has had so many chances to tell, missed so many chances to tell.

Unfortunately, he has never been able to see inside her head.