Читать книгу Queen of the Free State - Jennifer Friedman - Страница 9

Aunt Rosalind is beautiful, but not as beautiful as Ma, even though I can see she thinks she is when she smiles her secret smile at her reflection in mirrors and shop windows. I watch her pat her smooth brown hair while she preens at her own briefly glimpsed image. She looks like Ma, but Ma’s much prettier than her sister.

When Aunt Rosalind and Uncle Len go Overseas, Aunt Rosalind writes postcards and letters to Ma. Ma says her letters are exciting and exotic.

Our house is on the right side of the bridge in a small town in the northwest of the Free State, bordered by farmlands and mealies growing in dark red ground, right in the middle of the Goldfields near a big town called Welkom.

One day a letter arrives for Ma. We’re sitting in the dining room eating chops and vegetables for lunch. The sun is hot on the iron roof above our heads. Flies drone and bump against the windows. Pa helps himself to Ma’s beetroot and sliced onion salad from a bowl on the stiffly starched, green-and-white-checked tablecloth. From where I’m sitting, the lines in the cloth stretch straight and true. Ma opens her letter, scans its contents and starts reading it out aloud to us.

They’ve arrived in Gay Paree, writes Aunt Rosalind, visited the bright Tuileries Gardens, the opulent opera house, and photographed the view through the heroic Arc de Triomphe. She describes the spacious boulevards lined with clipped trees, patrolled by bejewelled-collared poodles on leashes held by elegantly dressed Parisian women, suave Frenchmen in berets, who sit all day long on tiny wrought-iron chairs in pavement cafés drinking hot chocolate and eating croissants. I hang onto every word, entranced by the images reeling out of the letter in Ma’s hands. A fly lands on the page she’s reading. Irritated, she waves the thin onion-skin sheet and reaches for the flyswatter with her free hand.

Behind Pa’s chair, our dining room wall redefines itself as the left bank of the Seine. The state-of-the-art standing lamp in the lounge is transformed into an ornate, cast-iron street light glowing yellow in the early-evening fog. I’m not sure what ‘fog’ is, but it sounds mysterious and exciting. Under the table, Sandy changes from a cocker spaniel into a curly-haired, primped poodle lifting a dainty leg to wee into the sluggish Seine.

Aunt Rosalind’s letter from the elegant end of another world describes patisseries and boulangeries – white loaves narrow and crisp, longer than Pa’s arm; gendarmes blowing whistles, wearing caps called kepis, directing Citroëns and rushing taxicabs, Renaults and Peugeots and bicycles darting in different directions, all hooting at once. Most exciting of all, she writes, they have dared to sample true French cuisine: they have eaten frogs’ legs! Pa and my sister gag on their chops.

‘Frogs’ legs? Ma, you mean they ate the legs of real, live frogs?’ I can’t believe my ears.

‘So it would appear,’ Ma murmurs. ‘Apparently the French consider them a real delicacy.’

‘Have you ever eaten frogs’ legs, Ma? Have you, Pa?’ I ask.

They shake their heads. Grimace in unison.

‘I wonder what they taste like?’

‘Curiosity killed the cat, my girl! Don’t you dare try anything funny …’

Ma peers at me over the tops of her spectacles. I glower at her across the table. Carefully, I place the old, bone-handled knife and fork side by side in the middle of my plate and, hoping to distract Ma’s attention from my uneaten vegetables, casually drape my napkin over them.

‘Please may I be excused from the table?’

Ma’s eyebrows crease.

‘Just a minute! What are you hiding under that napkin?’

She reaches across and whips it off my bread plate.

‘Sit down and finish your lunch, Jennifer.’

‘I don’t want any more, Ma. I hate vegetables.’

Pa bangs his hand down on the table, making us all jump.

‘Enough! That’s perfectly good food in front of you. There are millions of starving children who would give anything to eat it.’

My sister chews complacently. One half of a stringy green bean hangs out of her mouth and droops down her chin like a lizard’s tail.

‘Look, Ma,’ I point at her across the table. ‘She’s eating with her fingers!’

‘Mind your own manners, miss.’

‘You’re a big girl, sweetheart,’ Ma says, smiling at my sister. ‘You know how to use a knife and fork.’

I glare at them both.

‘You can give all my vegetables to the poor children, Pa. They taste horrible.’

Ma pats his hand, turns it over so that his big palm lies face-up on the table. She strokes it gently. Pa loves having his palms tickled. We beg her to tickle us too.

‘Tickling dulls the senses. It makes children stupid,’ Pa says.

All very well for him, I think.

The hovering fly finally settles on the table in the middle of a green square. Fastidiously, it starts polishing its antennae. Ma reaches for the flyswatter and smashes it down on her hapless victim. A moue of distaste pulls at the corners of her mouth; she narrows her eyes and turns over the swatter to examine the mashed remains.

‘Yes, you may go … you’re excused,’ she mutters.

Outside, pigeons and turtledoves call from the shade of the poplar trees. In the swamp a block away from our house, an occasional croak from a green-and-yellow-bellied bullfrog booms into the air. In the hot afternoons, when the summer rains come thundering over the veld, their wild chorus rises into the air so loud it drowns out the sound of our voices and, without asking for permission in the night, their sonorous songs invade the recesses of our dreams. I swing myself over our stiff, silver-painted front gate and run down the road and around the corner towards the swamp where the bullfrogs spawn and hatch and call.

As soon as I set foot on the track, the raucous croaking is silenced. I can hear the beat of my heart in my ears. I crouch down. The grass is as high as my middle. The tight plumes of seeds nod and wave pale green against the sky. A small frog squats in the mud, its liquid gold eyes splashed with black. Its sides move rapidly in and out. Poised to jump, its wide mouth closed in its habitual smile, the delicate webs between its knobbed toes are stretched thin, nearly transparent over the wet ground. It hops hesitantly and, as I bend down, it gathers up its long hind legs, croaks with fright and makes a startled leap for freedom. My hand swoops and catches the graceful jumper in mid-air. With the frog gripped tightly around its pulsating middle, its long legs pump frantically.

I love the eyes of frogs; it’s like staring into a glorious universe before the slow sweep of the nictitating membrane slides across and shutters closed the mysterious depths. The frogs’ soft underbellies are tinged with acid yellow, smooth and cool in my hand. Their bright green skins are shiny, dry and tight. At night, their nocturnal songs guide me into sleep. Comfort my dreams.

With my trophy safely thrashing away in my fist, I run for home. On the way back, I catch a glimpse of the magistrate’s fat cat between the purple prunus leaves, intent on catching the last goldfish swimming in the pond in the front garden of his house. He’s settled on his fat cat belly on the warm stones near the edge of the water. His head is drawn into his shoulders and he’s crouching like a sphinx, his white paws tucked tightly in under his soft black fur. As I run past the low wall, he raises his head to look at me. His green eyes flick from my face to the squirming legs in my hand. The cat raises itself as if to jump at me across the pond and over the wall.

‘Tsssst!’ I hiss.

It twitches its tail and settles back down to watch the teasing goldfish, occasionally stretching across the water to take quick, sharp cuffs at it with its unsheathed claws.

I struggle back over our gate with the now-quiet frog, unlatch the wooden door to the backyard and sidle into the kitchen through the open flyscreen. The house is quiet. I tiptoe across the linoleum floor to the cutlery drawer. Inside are big, bone-handled knives for cutting meat and smaller ones for spreading butter and jam, all equally blunt. I take one of the meat knives and quietly make my way out into the cool loggia. Sandy’s panting under his favourite daisy bush, ears cocked, tongue lolling on his paw.

I’m on my knees in the loggia, holding the squirming frog in one hand, the knife in the other. The frog is frantic.

‘This bladdy knife is so blunt!’ I mutter. ‘I don’t know how they get the legs off in France … Can’t you just keep still for a minute?’ I shout.

Sandy wants to play. He’s barking and yelping. I wish he’d go away. Ma hears him and thinks he’s cornered a mouse. I can hear her brisk footsteps coming closer. In a panic, I sit on the knife and push the squirming frog into my mouth.

Ma rushes in and looks around the room. She notices my pulsating cheeks, raises her eyebrows and blinks her eyes. She walks across the floor and stares down at me.

‘What’ve you got in your mouth, Jennifer?’

I shake my head. Out of the corner of my eye I can see my cheek poking in and out as though something’s jumping inside, trying to get out.

‘I asked you what you’ve got in your mouth?’

I shrug. I can’t open my mouth in case the frog jumps out. I can feel it hopping about on my tongue. I’m scared it’ll jump down my throat. Sandy drops his head between his front paws, ready to play. His eyes are fixed on my involuntarily bulging cheeks. My eyes are round with fright, my tongue wedged against my palate. I’m sure the frog’s made a wee in my mouth. Everyone knows a frog’s and a tortoise’s wee will give you warts. I feel sick. And I can hear it croaking inside my mouth. It sounds just like my record of Peter and the Wolf, where the duck quacks inside the wolf after he’s swallowed her alive …

I look at Ma. My jaws are aching. Sandy barks, jumps on top of me and starts licking my face. Ma holds her cupped hand out towards me.

‘Spit! Spit it out. Right now!’

In anguish, I reach up, take her wrist in my hand and bring my mouth to her open palm. I open my clenched jaws slowly, and the frog – released from its dark and awful prison – makes a joyful leap for freedom right into Ma’s waiting hand.

Her eyes roll. She shrieks, stamps her feet and shakes her hand desperately to dislodge the frog. Shuddering with fright and revulsion, she keeps wiping her palm against her dress. The frog – delighted to be free – jumps for its life and scuttles under the divan. Slimy threads of bitter wee and spit trail behind it. Sandy lies as flat as he can on the slate floor, growling and barking, his back legs splayed and twitching behind him.

Ma’s incandescent.

‘For God’s sake! What are you doing with a frog in your mouth? A live frog? Where did you get it? Oh! How could you?’

The bile-bitter taste in my mouth is making me gag. Finally, I manage to hawk up a big gob of bubbly spit. With unerring luck, it lands on the toe of Ma’s shiny brown brogue. She staggers back, hops on one leg, kicks her foot out and deftly flicks it off.

I’m panting. Ma’s not the only who’s had a fright, I think.

‘I just wanted to know what a frog’s legs tasted like, Ma … Aunt Rosalind said they were so delicious, but the knife was too blunt and I only tried to cut off one leg, Ma … and I had a plaster ready …’

‘What? You tried to cut off the frog’s leg? Where’s the knife? Where is it?’

My fingers are fishing around on the floor under me.

‘Here, Ma. Here it is!’

‘Ugh! My God, I’ll have to boil it … I can’t believe you actually put a live frog in your mouth!’

She stares at me, her unaffected hand clasping her cheek.

‘But, Ma, the frog’s all right. I didn’t even cut its skin.’

Then I remember.

‘Ma?’

She’s standing at the door to the lounge, clutching the handle of the offending knife between the tips of her fingers.

‘What?’ she asks.

‘Ma? Will I get warts on my tongue now?’

Her voice is tart.

‘I’ll be very happy to wash out your mouth with soap for you if that will make you feel better?’ Then she starts laughing.

She laughs until she has to bend over to catch her breath.

‘Oh my God,’ she says finally, ‘I really don’t know where you come from!’