Читать книгу Stargazer - Jan van Tonder - Страница 7

Never before had I taken a pee that had lasted so long. I must have drunk a gallon of water. The stream glistened in the moonlight. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop, not even if all the girls at school formed a circle around me, no matter how ashamed I was, not even if my willie shrivelled right up between my fingers. Not that it would take a lot, in the first place, for it to vanish completely. And no matter how much it shrank, it would still be out in the open, for there wasn’t a single hair it could hide behind.

It was Hennie’s fault that I’d drunk so much water. Hennie was a policeman who called on my sisters. Railway police, not SAP. Hennie was quick to declare that he wasn’t an ordinary “station flowerpot”; he was in the special branch charged with protecting railway property in the harbour and confiscating smuggled goods.

He had a car and he kept hinting that he’d like to take one of my sisters to the drive-in. He wasn’t sure which one he liked best, so he called on all of them, and never got lucky with any of them. In any case, Pa wouldn’t have allowed the girls to go to the drive-in. He said it was a place where good girls turned bad. Meantime I knew Bella had been to the Bluff drive-in with Hennie – I’d heard her tell the others. But when she came back she seemed angry, not bad. “Can you believe it, he didn’t even buy me a chocolate or a cooldrink! Just fetched two cups of coffee, one for the windscreen and one for the rear window. Next thing I knew, all the windows were fogged up and his hands were all over me.”

Ma disliked Hennie because he didn’t look you in the eye and because he’d pushed Riempies off his lap. There was something wrong with a person who couldn’t look you in the eye and who didn’t like animals, she said.

Once Hennie took a photo from his wallet and showed it to Martina and the others. Erika said sis! and turned away, but Martina took a closer look.

“Quite big for such a small guy, hey?” she remarked.

Hennie laughed and winked at Martina. “When a girl starts making comparisons, she’s been around, or what do you say? Perhaps I should take you to the drive-in next time.”

That was when they discovered I was in the kitchen, and hiding the photo would be useless. If Ma saw it, she’d wring Hennie’s neck. Our necks too, mind you. It was a photo of a naked Japanese lying on top of a woman, his willie pushed halfway into her. I’d never seen anything like it in my life.

Hein had often told me what men and women do to each other and sometimes I couldn’t believe my ears, but this time I’d seen the photo with my own eyes. Hennie would never have showed it to me if I hadn’t caught them redhanded. He knew Ma would chase him away like a dog if I told her, so he had no choice but to show it to me.

I would have liked to examine it a little longer, but he took it away and returned it to his wallet. “Horny already, and the lightie can’t even piss foam yet,” he said, glancing at Martina.

If Ma heard him talk like that . . .

I knew what horny meant, but I didn’t know what Hennie meant when he said I couldn’t piss foam. I couldn’t ask him in front of the girls, because then they’d know Hennie was right and I couldn’t do it, whatever it might be. A few evenings later Sarel and I were peeing outside. Sarel was Erika’s boyfriend. Suddenly I realised what Hennie had meant. Where Sarel’s stream hit the ground, bubbles appeared. By the time he’d zipped up and gone inside, the bubbles were still there. After a while they began to pop, but I remained there, watching until the last one had disappeared. That evening I decided I wouldn’t rest till I could do that too.

Now the moon was shining and I was peeing and peeing. The light fell on a few small bubbles, but they disappeared so quickly that they didn’t count. I stood on my toes to get a little height. That was no good either. I shook my willie and put it away, adjusting my trouser leg. Perhaps if I stood on something taller. Like a chair. Or something even bigger.

How about the roof? But people would see me there. I looked at Gladys’s kaya. Yep, that was the right place. High enough, and hidden among the branches of the wild fig.

The wild fig was huge. Ma kept asking Pa to chop it down, but he refused. Once he said: “Vrou, Jonah had a miracle tree that gave him shelter, a kind of vine that came up in the course of a single night and wilted in the course of a single day – imagine what a tree like this would have been worth to him!”

“Only because he didn’t have seven children, a husband and a mother’s washing to get dry, Abram!”

I froze when I heard Gladys’s door open. It was one of those corrugated iron doors that clattered like the lid of a rubbish bin. She set down her large basin outside the shower room, took a bucket and crossed the lawn to the back door. I remained there without knowing why, until she returned to her kaya with the bucket of hot water balanced on her head. She didn’t see me behind the trunk of the wild fig. She went into the shower room without closing the door behind her. Boytjie was probably asleep and she was leaving the door open to hear if he woke up.

A candle provided the only light inside the shower. Gladys undressed and kneeled, her bum resting on her heels. She scooped water with a tin can and poured it over herself. As she washed, her tits swung rhythmically from side to side. It reminded me of the lapping of the water in the harbour when a boat went past.

Carefully I climbed through the fence. From the Ahlerses’ banana trees I’d be able to watch Gladys without being seen. My foot caught on the wire and it made a sound. Gladys looked up. I was afraid she might close the door, but she didn’t. She began to soap her body all over. Her hands moved over her glistening legs and arms, sliding into her armpits and over and under her tits. I imagined how slippery her skin would feel under the suds, and how soft where it yielded under her fingers.

I’d never seen anything so amazing. Elsie and Helen were beautiful, yes, but I’d never seen them without clothes.

Gladys needn’t worry, I’d never try to scare her again when she fetched her bath water.

Now she was pouring water over herself once more. The creamy suds ran down her body. I sat down, because my back hurt from crouching among the banana leaves. The dry leaves rustled and snapped. Gladys raised her eyes and looked straight at me. My ears were burning, though I felt certain she couldn’t see me. She covered her breasts with her arm and blew out the candle. I heard her pouring more water over herself. It was quiet for a while. Then I heard a click as she closed the door of the kaya.

As I was about to climb back through the fence, the Ahlerses’ stoep light went on and the back door opened.

“Evening, Timus, where are you off to in such a hurry?” It was Oom Basie, Hein’s dad.

I hated it when Oom Basie stopped me to chat. He always said the same thing over and over. He had a moustache and a big stomach and only one leg. He used to be a shunter, but when he lost his leg they gave him an office job. There were rumours that he’d hidden a bottle at work, a few hundred yards from the loco, where the lines ran into the stop blocks. The uncoupled trucks rolled free after the locomotive or electric unit had given them a push. If you sat with your back to the loco, you couldn’t hear the trucks at all as they rolled past you. Dead quiet, those iron wheels on the track, even with a heavy locomotive like a Garratt. Only when they passed over the joints did you hear them: ticktick-ticktick.

It was a wonderful playground, but if a shunter was riding on one of the trucks, feet on the step, one hand on the grab handle, walkie-talkie in the other, you had to run like the wind, or he’d jump off and thrash you there and then. You couldn’t even complain at home, for what had you been doing there, the grown-ups would ask. It was the most dangerous place anyone might pick to play.

The story went that one evening, after an appointment with the bottle, Oom Basie had to couple two trucks. He saw that the buffers weren’t lined up and aimed a kick at the one that was out of line. In a flash his leg was trapped. Taken clean off. Blood everywhere when they pulled the trucks apart. There wasn’t a doctor in the world who could stitch up the soggy mess between his ankle and his knee.

Whenever Oom Basie got the chance, he insisted on telling the story. Braam said when he looked at Oom Basie he could understand why Fransien was the way she was. Fransien was Hein’s sister. No one wanted her for a girlfriend, though she always said she was going to marry Joon when she grew up.

There were three people Fransien loved more than all the others put together: her mom, Boytjie and Joon. Though she was only fifteen, she’d left school long ago. Her mouth was slack and her tongue moved around like a puppy that had got stuck halfway through being born. When she spoke, only her mom and Joon could make out what she was saying.

Behind Oom Basie Hein appeared. He must have heard his dad talking to me. “Take a look at this,” he said. “I bet you’ve never seen anything like it.”

I looked round carefully. Ma didn’t want me even talking to Hein, never mind entering their yard. I wished they’d switch off the stoep light.

“Look,” said Hein. “My dad got this from his pal who works at the whaling station.”

“What is it?” I only just managed to get my fingers around the thing. It protruded on either side of my hand.

“Whale tooth. Fuckin’ big, hey?”

If Ma saw me there and heard Hein’s language, and smelt Oom Basie’s breath!

I knew I’d better go home. But if I left, I wouldn’t be able to look at that whale tooth any longer. It was a beautiful thing. Smooth. Its colour somewhere between white and yellow, like the two hippopotamuses carved from ivory Pa had brought back from the North after the war. But I liked the whale tooth better.

“Do you think I could also get one?”

“Yes, if you go to the whaling station. And if you have two rand – those kaffirs who do the slaughtering are bloody greedy.”

Well, that was that then. I might as well forget it. Where would I get two rand? Now that I wasn’t helping with the trees any more I wouldn’t get a cent from Pa. He always asked whether I had any idea how hard he had to work for the money he brought home at the end of the month.

Now I wanted to go to the whaling station more than ever. You never knew. And even if I didn’t get a tooth, I could still watch them slaughter the whales. Braam always promised to take me, but I knew he’d never get round to it.

I could go there on my own, but Pa said he’d skin me alive if I did. It was too dangerous, he said, that area between the South Pier and the whaling station on the seaward side of the Bluff.

My bladder was starting to hurt from holding up my pee for so long.

I held out the tooth to Oom Basie, but Hein said: “No, give it here, it’s mine.” He took the tooth and put it into his pocket as if it was just any old thing you found behind a bush.

“I have to go inside,” I said.

Oom Basie put his crutches under his armpits and turned round on one leg. “Yes, I suppose I have to go in too. Are you coming, Hein?”

“In a minute, Pa.”

Luckily, Oom Basie switched off the light.

“I can’t keep it in any longer,” I said. I half turned my back on Hein and began to pull up the leg of my shorts.

“What are you ashamed of?” he asked.

“I’m not ashamed.”

“Then why are you turning away?”

“No reason.”

I took aim carefully, trying to keep it in one spot. Perhaps there’d be a miracle and Hein would witness it, I thought. There were bubbles all right, but they kept bursting.

“Fuckit,” Hein said, “what kind of bladder do you have?”

I shook my willie and put it away. “Is there foam when you pee?” I asked, not as if it was important to know. Casually, that was how I asked.

Without answering, he turned slightly, and took out his willie. “As we seem to be shy of each other all of a sudden …”

I was sorry he’d turned away, for I’d have liked to see the size of his willie. Hein Ahlers could be spiteful when he felt like it.

The stream hit the grass and in two ticks there was foam. “There’s your answer,” he said.

I pretended not to see. “Where?”

“There, you fool, don’t you have eyes?” The bubbles were bursting. I waited till they were nearly all gone before I answered.

“Mine is like that sometimes, but not all the time.”

Hein laughed. I thought it might be better to listen to Ma after all and stop talking to Hein Ahlers.

Sarel hadn’t laughed when we’d peed outside one evening. He was different from the other guys who called on my sisters. I liked him. Ouma Makkie had told Ma she saw a wedding on the horizon.

I heard Ouma ask Erika: “Child, tell me where you found this nice young man.”

Erika’s eyes shone. “Haven’t I told you, Ouma?”

Sarel was coming for lunch. Lately he’d been coming every Sunday, and on Friday evenings too. Pa didn’t want them to see each other more often, so that Erika wouldn’t neglect her school work. Lovesickness and school work don’t go together, Pa claimed.

“We met on the Trans-Karoo, Ouma, last December, on our way back from the farm.”

All day they’d stood talking in the corridor outside our compartment, till Pa had stuck his head through the sliding door and said: “Erika, come in now, tomorrow’s another day.”

A faraway look came into Ouma’s eyes. “Last December? Your oupa was still alive then.”

“Yes, Ouma.” You could see Erika didn’t want to talk about Oupa now.

“Shame.”

Suddenly I felt sorry for Ouma Makkie. It struck me for the first time how lonely she had to be. And sad – about Oupa and the farm and everything. When Ouma moved into my room, I hadn’t really considered her feelings. Now I realised how difficult it had to be for her to live in the city.

“I don’t want to be a burden to you, Awerjam,” I’d heard her say shortly after her arrival here.

Pa said: “Charity begins at home, Ma.”

And Ma told Ouma: “You’ll be like a fresh breeze in this house, Ma.”

At the time I was still angry about Ouma Makkie, but later I was glad that we got her and the rest of Ma’s family got only the chairs and tables and stuff. Even though her bedroom didn’t always smell of roses.

“But wait,” Ouma Makkie told Erika, “all that’s in the past; we were talking about your Sarel, weren’t we?”

“I love him a lot, Ouma.”

“And he loves you too, I can tell by the way he looks at you. Tell me, has he given you a nickname yet? You can learn a lot about a man’s feelings for his girl by the pet names he calls her. Don’t blush, child.”

Erika looked at the floor. “When we’re alone he calls me Spinnekop, Ouma. I know it’s silly, but he says it’s because, like a spider, I’ve spun a web of love around his heart so that he couldn’t break free even if he wanted to.”

Ouma put her hand on Erika’s arm. Her fingers were like twigs. “It’s not silly at all, Erika. Hold on to him. This man is the marrying kind, and his kind is very hard to come by. I always say, don’t trust a good-looking man – he’s everybody’s man – but your Sarel is cast from a different mould.”

“That’s true, Ouma.”

“I see your mother likes him too and that says a lot.”

“Even Pappie says he’s a fine boy.”

Ouma patted her hair and winked at Erika. “If I was about five or six years younger, I would have gone for that boy myself.” She laughed so that her dentures almost slipped from her mouth. She took them out anyway and curled the tip of her tongue into her nostril.

“Sis, Ouma!” Erika took a step back.

Ouma laughed. She looked at the dentures in her hand. “Teeth are just a nuisance, you know. If the good Lord had wished us to have teeth, we would’ve been born with them.” Then she laughed even more heartily.

Erika wasn’t amused. “Ouma, don’t you dare take out your teeth when Sarel is around, do you hear me!”

If only I could get to the whaling station, someone might give me a tooth, you never knew.

I was standing on the wooden jetty that extended into the harbour. If you walked along it, away from the shore, it was as if you were walking on water. The jetty rested on submerged poles. There was a soft lapping sound, like when you got the rare chance to take a bath on your own, and you lay there, playing quietly, because you didn’t want anyone to hear.

The tide was coming in. I knew this from everything that was floating past: plastic bags, a jellyfish, oil from the ships, forming shiny patches of colour on the water. Even a bottle cork. When you were fishing, you’d search in vain for a cork to make a float, but the minute your arm was in a cast and your fishing rod was at home . . . If I’d had a line in the water now, my bait would have been bobbing beneath my float. I knew fish liked moving bait. There were blacktails and pinkies and mullet in the water. The mullet never took the bait easily – you had to catch them with a jigger. To make a jigger you soldered three hooks together. You threw it in without a sinker and if you yanked the rod as you reeled in, the sharp points would lodge in the body of the fish and you could pull it out. But you had to watch out for the harbour police if you had a jigger on your line.

The cork drifted faster than the other objects, because it floated on top of the water and the wind was helping it along. It was the same wind that blew the stench from the whaling station in our direction so that it was sometimes unbearable, whether you were at home, at school or in church.

Behind the cork a submerged object was drifting in the water. It was long and transparent like a sausage casing, open on one side and with a teat at the closed end. A glassy had got stuck in the narrow end and was trapped inside the thing – it couldn’t move forward or backward. Now I was truly sorry I didn’t have my fishing rod. I would’ve fished out the casing and used the little fish for live bait. With live bait you might even catch a bonito or something. Or a barracuda, but for that you had to use a steel trace.

“What’s so interesting in the water, Timus?” It was Hein’s voice. When I turned round, I saw he had a few of his friends with him. A cigarette was dangling from his lips. “Are you looking for a mermaid who likes lighties with their arm in a cast?” he asked. His friends laughed.

I was about to get angry, but just in time I remembered the strange thing in the water, and I pointed at it.

“What’s that?”

They all looked at where I was pointing and burst out in peals of laughter. They were clutching at the railings not to fall into the water. Hein flicked his cigarette butt in the direction of the thing. “It’s an effie, man,” he said.

“What’s an effie?”

“Good Lord, can anyone be so stupid?”

“It’s what the Japanese use when the whores service them on the ships.”

I shook my head in bewilderment. I had no idea what they were talking about.

Hein said: “Man, they pull it over their cocks when they fuck the whores. So that they don’t make babies. What use would a pregnant whore be?”

“Do ordinary people use it too, or only whores and Japanese?”

They didn’t answer at first. Just slapped each other on the back and began to laugh all over again.

Then Hein said: “Now this is the lightie I told you about, the champion foam pisser of the railway camp.”

They uttered a string of filthy things as they left. Now I was too scared to go on to the whaling station – what if I met them along the way?

I waited until I could no longer see them. Then I ran along the harbour wall until I found the effie. The tiny fish was still trapped inside. It couldn’t be true. No willie could swell like that. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the Japanese on Hennie’s photo, but it was no use; the photo had been too small to be able to tell. No, Hein and his friends must have made up the story. How could an effie prevent babies anyway? If it was true, Rykie wouldn’t have a bun in the oven. And Juffrou Louw wouldn’t have had to speak to the class about overpopulation last week. And I wouldn’t have been in trouble. But then someone had to go and ask: “Why do poor people always have so many children, Juffrou?”

Juffrou Louw shook her head. “An interesting question. Can anyone suggest an answer?”

Everyone was just staring at her. Then she said: “I’m afraid I don’t understand it myself. You know, there’s a point, during a period of drought, for instance, when even the big apes like orang-utans know better than to continue breeding, yet people have one child after another, but are quick to complain about money for food and clothing.”

Ma always said her children were her riches, but I wasn’t sure about that. I couldn’t help noticing that rich people didn’t have so many children. And rich people had cars. And the houses they lived in belonged to them, not to the Railways.

I put up my hand.

“Yes, Timus?”

“Juffrou, I wonder if sometimes it couldn’t be . . .” Immediately I regretted having spoken.

“Yes, Timus?”

“Whether perhaps it could be that the Lord allows an extra few to be born. I mean –”

“Timus!” Juffrou Louw turned a deep crimson colour.

“I only mean, Juffrou –”

“I know exactly what you mean, and I don’t think I want to pollute the minds of the rest of the class any further. Come, you may tell Meneer Gertenbach what you’re accusing God of!”

Juffrou Louw knew all about us Rademans, how many children we were. She’d taught my brothers and sisters as well. Erika and Martina were still in her biology class. I thought she’d understand what I meant.

My only hope lay with Meneer Gertenbach, but it was not like the fixed hope that Dominee Van den Berg was always preaching about.

“What’s the problem today, Juffrou Louw?” Meneer Gertenbach asked. In a corner of his office there was a shelf for walking sticks, just like Oupa’s on the farm, but instead of walking sticks, his was stocked with canes.

Juffrou Louw’s face was still bright red. “I don’t really know how to put it to you without making myself guilty of blasphemy, Meneer, but what Timus has just said in the classroom, in front of the other children . . .” She pressed her fist halfway into her mouth – something I should perhaps have done rather than speak out the way I always did.

Meneer Gertenbach went over to the shelf of canes. “Carry on, Juffrou.”

“I really don’t know how to put it, Meneer, but what the child said boiled down to the world’s overpopulation being God’s fault instead of man’s.”

Meneer Gertenbach took out his hankie, a clean, white one that was still folded, and selected a cane. There were yellow ones, brown ones, thick ones, thin ones, some with which I’d been whipped before and new ones that he’d acquired in the meantime. I wanted to tell Meneer Gertenbach not to punish me because I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I held my tongue.

He grasped one corner of the hankie and shook it. It looked like a big bird flapping its wings. His shoulders were hunched like Oupa’s one day on the farm when he’d been really furious. Braam and I had been playing in the dam. The two of us, and Hendrik and Frikkie and Herklaas. They belonged to Lena, who worked in the kitchen. We’d caught a Muscovy duck and pushed it underwater and held it for a while before letting it go. We knew a Muscovy duck never came up where you pushed it under; it always swam away from you first. We never knew where it was going to come up next, because the water was murky and a Muscovy duck could hold its breath for a long time. As soon as it surfaced, the closest one would grab it and push it under again. The Muscovy duck came up next to me and I must have held it underwater too long, for when I let it go, it surfaced immediately. Didn’t even lift its head out of the water.

“Now you’re in trouble,” Braam said. While I was taking the lifeless duck to the side to hide it in the bushes, I heard Oupa’s voice: “Bring that duck here! Give it to me!” Oupa was very angry. In one hand he held his yellow walking stick, in the other the dead white duck.

“Please don’t hit me, Oupa,” I said.

“What?” It was Meneer Gertenbach’s voice. He was polishing the cane with his hankie. “What did you just say, Timus?”

“I’m telling you, Meneer, the boy has no respect.”

Meneer Gertenbach sat down on the edge of his desk. “You were somewhere else just now, weren’t you, Timus?”

My head nodded of its own accord.

“Mm. Now tell me why you’re accusing the Lord of all kinds of things.”

I told him what I’d said to Juffrou Louw. “I only meant that it wasn’t my mother who decided to have three sets of twins, Meneer.” Not a word about her double-yolked eggs – that would probably send Juffrou Louw into a brand-new fit. “That’s all I wanted to say, Meneer, it must be the Lord who decides about these things.”

Meneer Gertenbach had been listening carefully. “Juffrou Louw, I think the boy was just not expressing himself properly. Formulate your answers more carefully in future, Timus. But yes, what you say is true: Man proposes, God disposes. I think that’s what he meant, Juffrou.”

Juffrou Louw looked very unhappy. Outside I heard her mutter: “If only certain people would propose a little less often . . .”

Everyone stared at me as we entered the class. Elsie too. I would rather have been given a hiding.

“What have you been doing all day?” Pa asked.

“I went to the harbour, Pa.”

“To do what? You can’t fish with that cast on your arm.”

“I just felt like it, Pa.”

“Timus?”

“Yes, Pa?”

“Did you go to the whaling station?” The white and the blue of his eyes began to merge.

I looked away.

“No, Pa.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“No, Pa.”

“Mm,” he muttered, “don’t let me find out you went there.” He took out his pocketknife and began to clean his nails. “If you didn’t have a broken arm, you could’ve helped me with the Shaws’ trees. We could’ve had at least one down today.”

Mara winked at me. She’d told me so.

The wind had blown down a tree at Kenneth’s place and it had fallen across their lawn. I’d told his mom she should ask Pa to remove the tree. When he went to see her, she asked him to take out two more trees if he could find the time, before they fell on one of her children. I enjoyed going there, so I’d been looking forward to helping Pa with the job. Now Pa seemed to think I was shirking my duty.

When we felled a tree, I climbed up and Pa showed me where to tie a rope around a strong branch. Then I sawed through the branch while Pa pulled on the rope so that the branch would fall in the right spot. I worked my way down, sawing off branches as far as I went, until the trunk was almost bare.

Pa always took off his shirt. In Durban, the minute you got out of the bath your clothes would be clinging to your body again, he said, not to mention when you stood in the sun, digging out trees. I liked watching the way Pa’s muscles rippled when he worked. After a while his arms and back would be glistening with sweat. He knew exactly where the axe should strike for the trunk to fall precisely where he wanted it, away from houses and power lines and fences. I helped him cut up the branches with a two-handed saw. Then I went home and Pa would start digging. If the trees were very big, he dug down deep. Sometimes he had to return for a few Saturdays before he got all the roots out. Then he was paid and he brought the money home to Ma. He paid me twenty cents for every big tree we felled.