Читать книгу Queen of the Free State - Jennifer Friedman - Страница 10

Our new house has been built specially for us on the other side of the railway line. On the good, right side. We’ve got a special room called a ‘loggia’ and a special lavvy that’s so low down that, when I sit on it, it feels as if my bottom is almost touching the floor.

I don’t know how Pa or Ma can get all the way down on it, but Pa says that’s the way all lavs should be.

‘Low enough to squat,’ he says. He clears his throat. ‘That’s the natural way.’

No one else has a lavvy like ours, and no one else has a room called a loggia, either.

‘And now?’ everyone asks when they come to visit us for the first time. ‘Did the builders forget to build the last wall, Jack? This room is mos only half built, man – anyone can come inside!’

Pa shakes his head in despair.

‘Bloody ignoramuses,’ he tells Ma when our visitors have gone home.

‘The ancient Romans used to build loggias onto their houses,’ he explains to our guests. ‘It’s supposed to be this way. A loggia is part of a house that has one side open to the air, you see? It’s a room that’s sort of like a verandah – a stoep – you know, only it’s a whole room.’

Isak plants poplar trees along the silver-painted fence, clumps of calla lilies and dahlias, roses and shrubs, petunias and pansies in the flowerbeds. He plants fruit trees in the orchard and a perfumed syringa tree in the back garden for shade.

The new rooms echo, the parquet floors ring with Ma’s brisk footsteps, Sandy’s clicking nails. On weekends we can hear the bells of the mother church.

‘Why do the church bells ring for such a long time, Pa?’

‘They’re calling the people to come. To pray.’

‘Pray for what, Pa?’

‘Forgiveness. For being bad … naughty …’

‘Why don’t we go to church, Pa?’

‘Shush. I’m reading.’

The new house is much bigger than our old one; Ma decides Marta needs someone to help her. Bettie and her clinking carpetbag move into the maid’s room on the other side of the yard. I don’t like her. She smells. She shouts at Sandy and me when Ma’s not there.

‘She’ll have to go. She drinks,’ Ma tells Pa.

Marta’s outside hanging up the washing.

‘Marta!’

Marta drops the washing back in the basket, wipes her hands on the front of her overall and runs into the kitchen.

‘I want you to find someone to help with the housework, Marta,’ Ma says. ‘That Bettie’s no good – how about your friend, Sara?’

Marta claps her hands, dips her knees.

Sara moves into the empty maid’s room. Tall and thin, she has a quiet voice, slow smile. Her long feet are narrow, with small toes like baby grapes. When I sit under the plum trees with them, Marta and Sara sit on their Basotho blankets, their legs straight on the grass in front of them. In winter, they wrap their blankets around their waists to keep themselves warm. Isak sits on an upended bucket. They eat putu pap and gravy out of the pot with their fingers. Ma calls me inside for lunch.

‘Why can’t I sit outside and eat with them?’ I ask.

‘Because I say so,’ she says.

‘I don’t want you going into Sara’s room.’ Ma’s voice is firm.

‘But it’s always so neat and clean, Ma!’

‘I know it is, but her room is private and I want you to stay out of it.’

Sara’s raised her bed high on bricks, covered her mattress with my old pink bedspread Ma gave her. She hasn’t got a lot of clothes or furniture. That’s because she’s poor. She told me so. She’s only got a bed, a narrow wooden cupboard and a small table in her room. The table’s one leg is shorter than the others. It doesn’t wobble very much, because Sara’s stuffed a thick piece of newspaper under the short leg. Ma said she could also have the old wicker chair from outside. I don’t like sitting on it – the curly bits in the hollowed-out seat prick my bottom. Ma gave her the feather cushion that used to lie on the piano stool. The sharp ends of the feathers poke out of the green cover. Ma said it was too uncomfortable to sit on, so she gave it to Sara.

Pictures from Ma’s old Ladies’ Home Journal and the Sunday Times are stuck all over the walls. Sara and Marta sigh, click their tongues when they look at them. Sara’s lined the small shelves of two wooden tomato boxes with scalloped newspaper. That’s where she keeps her black comb and her bright, pink, round mirror. Her room smells of Vicks and cold, like ice left in the freezer for a long time. Ma says the smell’s probably from the cement floor; it wouldn’t be so bad if it had a carpet on it. She gave Sara a paraffin heater to use in winter – she doesn’t think she needs a carpet as well.

Ma’s arranging flowers in a vase at the kitchen counter. While she surveys her handiwork through narrowed eyes, her hand hovers over the foliage in the basket in front of her.

‘Ma, don’t you think a carpet would look nice in Sara’s room? Hey, Ma? I told her, maybe you could make curtains for her window – it isn’t big, you know? You wouldn’t need a lot of material …’

Ma says she hasn’t got time to make curtains for the maid’s room. I must stop making promises on her behalf.

‘But I didn’t promise Sara you’d make them, Ma. I just said maybe you’d be able to …

Ma says if Sara wants curtains, she can jolly well make them herself.

I play with Sandy and my farm cousins and, sometimes, depending on how desperate the situation, my younger sister. My second-best friend Willie-Venter is still living in the sideboard in our new dining room. Only Sandy and I can see him. Sandy’s my best, best friend. I love him. I’ve got a new friend too. Her name is Nellie. Her granny and grandpa live in the house on the corner opposite ours. Nellie’s one year older than I am. She’s also going to start school next year, only in Bloemfontein. That’s where she lives.

When it’s Christmas time, she and her family always come to visit her granny and grandpa. Her granny’s got a face just like the man on the moon: pale and flat and round, with small currant-eyes. Her grandpa has the same name as my second-best friend, Willie-Venter. I call them ‘tannie’ and ‘oom’.

One hot December morning, Ma and I are having breakfast.

‘I see Nellie and her family have arrived to visit for Christmas, Jen. Why don’t you run across the road and see if she’d like to come and play with you?’

I dash outside, down the garden path, out of the gate, and across the road.

Nellie’s granny answers the door.

‘No, no – you stay out here on the stoep,’ she tells me, closing the screen door. ‘I’ll call Nellie. You wait here, hey? I don’t want …’

Nellie comes pounding down the dark passage.

‘Haaallo!’

Her granny clicks her tongue.

‘Ag no, child. Not so loud – and stop running inside the house – it’s not nice!’

We wait outside on the stoep while her granny lumbers back down the passage. Nellie wants to show me the Big Surprise in the corner of the voorkamer. Ma says that’s another name for a ‘lounge’. Grandpa MJ and Granny have got a parlour. We’ve got a lounge.

The Big Surprise stands in its corner every year at Christmas time. Every year, I stand with my hands on either side of my face, my breath fogging and smearing the window while I gaze in wonder at the shimmering Christmas tree, its gold baubles and flashing green and red lights. At the very top, on the spiky tip, a great, golden star glitters and winks. Strings of silver tinsel are draped around the branches of the fir tree and iced gingerbread men and small wooden toys swing among the exquisite balls hanging from the dark pine needles.

‘My granny says you can’t come inside to look at our Christmas tree,’ Nellie whispers the first time she shows it to me, ‘’cause you’re not a true believer.’

‘What’s a true believer?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs. ‘My granny says only Afrikaners are true believers, so only they can have a Christmas tree. You and your ma and pa and your sister aren’t Afrikaners. So – what are you, then?’

‘I don’t know. What’s an Afrikaner?’

‘I don’t know. We’re Afrikaners. You’re not … my granny says so.’

‘Oh. Okay. You want to come and play at my house?’

‘Ja, orraait.’

In the house next to us lives the mysterious, reclusive Mrs Fensham, her venetian blinds drawn against the world outside, her life almost invisible in the pristine rooms of her silent home. Her garden path is lined with exquisite miniature roses and, even though we’ve got lots of roses in our garden too, none are as dainty or as perfect as those leading to Mrs Fensham’s front door.

Perched high in the syringa tree in our back garden, I can see her sitting on a chair outside, a cardigan around her shoulders, her back to the sun-warmed wall of her kitchen, nodding and smiling to herself, gazing out at her garden. Sometimes she leans forward, her head to one side as if she’s suddenly heard the voice of someone she’s long been waiting for.

‘Stop bothering Mrs Fensham,’ Ma says. ‘Don’t ask if you can pick her roses and don’t talk to her about Mr Fensham – mind your own business. She’s so quiet and refined. Such a perfect neighbour …’

Ma says I’m not allowed to shoot my bamboo arrows across our split-pole fence. They might hit Mrs Fensham, or tear her Monday washing flapping on its windy wash line.

‘I think Mrs Fensham’s waiting for my arrow, Ma. Maybe she’s waiting for me.’ I look up at her through my fringe. ‘Maybe she’s waiting for Mr Fensham …’

Ma tells me I’m talking rubbish.

On the other side of our new house, Ma likes to pretend we don’t have any neighbours at all.

‘Those people! That house!’

That house, with its dank maid’s room and garage, paint flaking off the walls, squats on the other side of Sara’s room. That’s where Mr and Mrs Le Roux-next-door live. Mr Le Roux is a taxi driver. His wife is a drunk. They don’t live in their house; Mr and Mrs Le Roux live in their maid’s room. It’s at the bottom of their garage where Mr Le Roux parks his taxi. Only its bonneted snout pokes in through the wooden doors. Its broad rump is always outside. Exposed to the elements.

‘But why do they live in their maid’s room, Ma? They’ve got a proper house – why don’t they live in it? Hey, Ma?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ she sniffs. ‘There’s just no accounting for some people …’

When the drought bites and times become hard, some farmers pay their chemist account at Pa’s chemist shop with live chickens.

‘Isak.’ Ma’s voice is stern. ‘You must slaughter the chickens around the side of Sara’s room, okay?’

In the gloomy space between Sara’s room and the Le Rouxs’ garage, no one can see the blood from the chickens’ severed necks pooling and clotting, soaking away into the red ground.

But sometimes Isak just chops off the chicken’s head on the grass under the wash lines. Bloody gobs spray up out of the severed neck and the chicken’s headless body careens, lurching and staggering just like Mrs Le Roux-next-door when she’s drunk. Isak and I sit on our heels, hugging our fists under our chins, rocking and laughing, the bloodstained axe on the grass at Isak’s side. When she hears us, Ma storms outside.

‘Isak! I told you to slaughter the chickens around the side of Sara’s room! Hose down the grass immediately!’

Isak catches my eye. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes are bright. I know he’s laughing with me. He’s my friend.

Every morning Mr Le Roux shuffles duck-footed out of his garage, mumbling and coughing. Nodding feebly, he touches the peak of his taxi driver’s cap in the direction of our house and Ma. Then he clears his throat, long and loud. I look across the breakfast table at Ma while she tries to ignore the sounds of his gobs of snot and yellow phlegm plopping down on the ground outside.

The drink makes Mrs Le Roux-next-door violent and vulgar. The air crackles as she roars, clumsy as a badger, screaming and throwing crockery, flailing against her close walls. When she staggers outside, she continues her diatribe against her husband, her ungrateful children, the natives, the Jews, the sky that is too blue, the birds that sing too loud. She prides herself on her marcelled waves she keeps firmly in place with clips that pull at her dyed hair. She calls them ‘vaifs’ in her thick Afrikaans accent. She wears a doek on her head like a maid. It keeps her elegant look intact.

‘… so my vaifs stay perfect,’ she purrs when she sees Ma on the other side of the fence. She pats her curlered head, lumpy under its covering. ‘I only take it off when I go out.’

But we never see her leave her house.

She paints her chipped nails with thick red polish, and slashes oxblood lipstick, dark as a wound, across the gash of her mouth.

‘Ag, I used to be such a beauty,’ she sighs.

When Mrs Le Roux is drunk, I like to stand in the cubby house at the bottom of the garden and listen to her swear. No one can see me in there. Isak sawed a stable door and windows out of a huge wooden crate. The cubby house has a real cement floor. Ma said I could garden along the sides of the path leading to its door. I’ve got a peach tree and every year I plant radishes and marigolds and nasturtiums. Ma says they’re foolproof. Not like the calabashes that look so pretty on the seed packet. I plant them every year, but so far I haven’t had a single one.

When Mrs Le Roux is drunk, she swears a lot. Much more than Uncle-Leslie-on-the-farm does. Uncle-Leslie-on-the-farm is Ma’s brother. She says that means she’s allowed to tell him what to do. She tells him he mustn’t swear so much, I’ll pick up his bad habits. He fought in the Second World War Up North in a tank in the desert. In the smooth, thick photographs he sent home to Granny and Grandpa MJ, he’s the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. He can shout very loud, especially when we’ve been naughty. He’s got a very bad temper just like Grandpa MJ and he’s got a magic tooth. It’s right in the front of his mouth. He can pop it in and out when he feels like it. He’s very strict. I love him very much. He lets me go where I want on the farm – he never thinks I can’t do something just because I’m a girl. Ma and Pa don’t swear, except sometimes. They say damn or hell or bluddy.

Pa says, ‘Bluddy mowron!’

Sometimes Ma says, ‘Blithering idiot!’

Grandpa MJ says, ‘Blaaady. Don’t be a blaaady fool!’

Only prickly pears grow in our neighbours’ neglected backyard. Ma says that’s because prickly pears grow wild anyway. One day I climbed over the fence when no one was outside, but I lost my balance and fell right into a prickly pear bush. Its teeny thorns stung like fire. My legs and arms were so sore I couldn’t even pick one prickly pear. Marta said if I rubbed butter all over, the stings would go away. But they didn’t. When Ma caught me whimpering in the bathroom, she said it served me right.

The minute she hears Mrs Le Roux-next-door start to shout and wail, Ma moves to protect us.

‘You children stay indoors! That woman may have the right to free speech in her backyard, but not in earshot of my children!’

Clad in the impenetrable armour of her refinement, Ma stalks outside, positions herself between the plum trees and the back fence. Her thin little legs are poised for flight, tensed and quivering in the direct line of Mrs Le Roux’s fire.

‘Mrs Le Roux, lower your voice! Control your language, please!’

In response, a torrent of abuse pours out of the window. Ma’s voice trembles.

‘Mrs Le Roux, your behaviour is intolerable!’

The hounds of hell are duly released. Ma’s neck and shoulders stiffen in the slipstream. Her nostrils flare. Her voice drops. Finally, exhausted by the river of vitriol streaming across the fence, she shoots her final arrow.

‘You’re drunk, Mrs Le Roux – drunk again! You’re a disgusting degenerate! I’m going inside to telephone the dominee and the police!’

Ma knows this is a battle she’ll never win. She tosses her head, sucks her mouth into a grim little drawstring, and turns on her heel. Ignoring the plum branches pulling at her hair, she marches back inside.

‘Jennifer!’ she roars. ‘Get out of that cubby house! Go to your room this instant!’

Ma’s got eyes in the back of her head.