Читать книгу Forget-me-not-Blues - Marita van der Vyver - Страница 10

All together now, the little crippled photographer sings out in his strange accent: ‘Say cheeeeza.’ And for the umpteenth time the group in front of the camera laugh and say ‘cheeeeza’.

‘I will never be able to eat cheese again without thinking of my wedding day,’ Ouboet says with mock exasperation.

They have been posing for Mister Giuseppe for close to an hour already; just the happy couple at first while the rest stood and watched, then the happy couple together with their parents, and now the whole caboodle: bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girl and pageboy too. The setting for the official wedding photographs is the rose garden on a distinguished Boland farm, with a dam with ducks, a whitewashed slave bell and a Cape Dutch gabled homestead in the background. Too beautiful for words, the groom’s mother sighs tearfully every now and then. Ouboet’s bride grew up in this gabled homestead, the eldest daughter of a wealthy wine farmer who is nowadays also a Member of Parliament – for Dr Malan’s party, of course – and the apple of her father’s eye.

‘Your brother really struck it lucky when this girl agreed to ­marry him,’ the chief groomsman remarked to Kleinboet yesterday when the bridal couple and their retinue gathered for the wedding rehearsal in the Dutch Reformed Church in town. Oh no, Kleinboet said, luck has nothing to do with it. My brother doesn’t rely on luck. Everything is carefully planned.

Colette had been rather shocked by his comment. Ouboet wasn’t as cold-blooded as all that, she scolded Kleinboet after the rehearsal. Anyone could see he was madly in love with Elsa!

‘Of course,’ Kleinboet mollified her. ‘Let’s just say that it was easier for him to fall madly in love with the daughter of a rich and important father than with any other girl.’

But Colette is convinced Ouboet doesn’t need a rich or important father-in-law. Not with a Bright Future having been predicted for him since childhood. He had been at the top of his class throughout his legal studies at Stellenbosch, and a member of the Student Council in his final year, and everyone on campus knew his name. As she soon discovered when she started studying last year. Even though Ouboet has now left the campus to establish himself as a brilliant young lawyer in the city, his Bright Future continues to cast a long shadow over her and Kleinboet.

Just look at him standing there grinning in his tails with his radiant bride on his arm, his important in-laws, proud parents and a large retinue fanned out around him, the groomsmen also in tails, the bridesmaids in canary-yellow silk and brocade. Colette doesn’t like wearing yellow; it brings out the yellow in her blonde hair and pale skin, and makes her look like someone with kidney failure.

But as the third bridesmaid, along with the bride’s best friend and the bride’s younger sister, she didn’t have much say. Elsa adores yellow, it goes well with her bronzed skin and golden brown hair, and on this joyous day she wanted to surround herself with yellow. Even the bridesmaids’ satin shoes and long gloves are pale yellow. Kleinboet is also a groomsman, along with two of Ouboet’s student friends, Pietman and Hannes, and presumably no less ill at ease in his swallowtail coat than his sister in her canary outfit. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, Colette consoles herself, just like one canary cannot ruin a wedding.

Elsa’s wedding gown is a miracle of brocade and tulle and lace, a heart-shaped bodice, and a fitted jacket of transparent lace and tiny pearl buttons that conceal and yet reveal her bare shoulders and arms – decent enough for the church ceremony, easy enough to remove the jacket later on at the reception – and a skirt so extravagantly wide that she almost got stuck in the aisle on the way to the altar.

There had been an absurd moment while the opening notes of the wedding march boomed through the church and the guests in the pews all looked around in anticipation, and the bride stayed rooted to the spot because it had suddenly dawned on her that her dress could get caught on the equally extravagant bouquets on the ends of the pews. This was something no one had foreseen! During yesterday’s thorough wedding rehearsal the bride had naturally not worn her wedding gown. And the bouquets of pink and yellow roses from the garden on the farm had not yet been attached to the pews, so when the bride stopped unexpectedly in her tracks, the second bridesmaid collided with the first, at which point both started giggling from sheer nervousness. Colette, right at the back, wondered how many rules of etiquette she would break and whether her mother would ever forgive her if she rushed to the front to try and pave a way for the bride through the flowers.

Fortunately a practical farmer’s wife in one of the back rows saved the day by pulling away the rose bouquet closest to her and signalling to the guests up ahead to do the same. The message was carried in whispers from one pew to the next, and the flowers parted before the bride like the Red Sea before Moses and the Israelites, a rare spectacle that would make Colette fight an uncontrollable fit of laughter throughout the ceremony. Every now and again, standing in front of the altar with the rest of the wedding party, she would lose the battle and feel her shoulders shaking with laughter, her only hope that the guests behind her would believe she was crying. Surely tears were an admirable show of emotion for a groom’s sister?

The first two bridesmaids, having by now recovered from their own brief fit of giggles, shot her a few indignant glances. Kleinboet raised his eyebrows, concerned. Only Hannes, the second groomsman, looked as if he too was choking with laughter. And apparently it was precisely the third bridesmaid’s desperate attempt to keep from laughing that amused him so.

Or so he’s just confessed to her, while they wait under the pepper tree watching the bridal couple pose for Mister Giuseppe one final time on their own. Colette tries to hide her embarrassment by staring at her yellow satin shoes. One of her paper dolls had shoes exactly like these. Judy Garland? Vivienne Leigh? She still has the flat cardboard box with her collection of cut-outs under her bed at home.

Now, for the very last time, Mister Giuseppe pleads, beeeg cheeeeza. The swarthy little man with the limp apparently ended up in South Africa as an Italian prisoner of war, and after the war decided to build his future here. Far more opportunities here than in the impoverished south of Italy where he was born, or so he had confided to Kleinboet in between taking pictures – the only member of the bridal party who had engaged him in a conversation. More opportunities for a white man, certainly, Kleinboet had said.

‘Well, I will never ever dream of a wide wedding dress again,’ Colette says. ‘It is all very well for a paper doll or a princess in a cathedral, but it doesn’t work for an ordinary bride in a Dutch Reformed Church. That is something I learnt today.’

‘What I have learnt from the past two days’ rehearsals and fuss,’ Hannes says. ‘is that it might be better to marry quietly in a magistrate’s court.’

‘After the past couple of days,’ Kleinboet says, ‘I think it might be better not to get married at all.’

‘Not even if it meant riding in such a beautiful wedding car?’ Hannes gestures towards the gleaming black Jaguar with cream leather upholstery – specially borrowed for the wedding from somewhere – in which the bridal couple is about to depart for the reception in town. Just like the lean predator that gave it its name, the vehicle presents itself to be admired, its nose high and round, its tail low and flat, chrome finishes sparkling in the late afternoon sun.

‘There has to be an easier way to earn a ride in such a car,’ Kleinboet sighs.

The two groomsmen gaze longingly at the car for a few moments. Colette wonders, not for the first time in her life, why most men find it easier to resist a beautiful girl than a beautiful car. Not that she wants Hannes – or any other young man at this wedding – to find her irresistible. But still.

Pappie-Deddy is growing old, Colette realises a while later at the reception, watching her father propose an official toast. When he decided to grow back his moustache after the war, it came out silver-grey. He trims it far less severely than before, nothing that would remotely remind you of Hitler, rather of a retired British air-force officer. His hair is steely grey and still plastered to his head with oil. Unlike Mammie, growing older hasn’t made him rounder, just greyer. Even his skin is starting to wear a faint grey sheen.

Imagine, he is already in his fifties. To Colette, who is barely nineteen on this first weekend of April 1952, it seems inconceivably old. Everyone must grow old and die, she tries to convince herself, no exceptions. Except of course for those who die young. Not exactly a comforting thought. Better to grow old, then. Barely two months ago the British king dropped dead, and now the young Princess Elizabeth is queen of the mighty British Empire. Ouboet is convinced, though, that the Union won’t remain a member of this Empire for much longer. It is the Afrikaner’s God-given destiny, Ouboet believes, to have an independent fatherland with its own flag and its own anthem.

‘But I like the Union Jack,’ Mammie remonstrates. ‘I like to see it waving above buildings!’ Fluttering, Deddy corrects her, ever the linguist. A person waves. A flag flutters. ‘And I like singing “God save the King”,’ Mammie continues undisturbed. ‘I mean “God save the Queen”, of course.’

Ouboet’s new father-in-law, the important MP who gets up to make a speech after Deddy, believes just as stolidly as Ouboet in the Afrikaner’s God-given destiny. You can hear right away that this is a man accustomed to addressing large crowds at political gatherings and agricultural shows. His voice carries so much better than Deddy’s, his tone is so much more jovial and self-assured, and he keeps interrupting his phrases with expectant pauses, as if he wants to give the audience a chance to applaud.

‘This is an exceptional weekend for all of us,’ says Frans Louw MP in his booming voice, followed by a little pause. ‘Not only because we are celebrating the wedding of two exceptional young people, but also because we are commemorating an exceptional day.’ Another pause. ‘The day on which Jan van Riebeeck brought the light of European civilisation to this dark continent.’ A longer pause. ‘Tomorrow, on the sixth of April 1952, it will be exactly three hundred years since the three ships from Holland dropped anchor here.’ Lengthy, solemn pause.

Mammie gazes at the speaker, almost open-mouthed with admiration. She is delighted with the new in-laws, not because of the association with the ruling party, but because of the beautiful old farm and the ‘genteel refinement’ of the people. Mammie is growing steadily plumper, but today she has squeezed all the bumps and folds into a murderous step-in girdle so she can wear a fitted dress of sky-blue shantung. With a few yellow accents, for the sake of the bride. She looks elegant and dignified, Colette has to admit, in contrast with the bride’s mother, who must also have been a beautiful girl in her day but who now looks like a sack of potatoes wearing a dark blue hat and gloves. Thick neck, double chin and swollen ankles. Shame, Colette thinks, if it is true that girls end up looking like their mothers, she is exceptionally grateful that she isn’t Elsa.

‘Many of us took part in the celebrations in Cape Town this past month,’ the father of the bride continues. ‘We visited the imposing Festival Grounds.’ Pause. ‘Admired the exceptional float procession.’

Colette catches the eye of Kleinboet sitting opposite her at the table set aside for the retinue, and sees his eyebrows rise in consternation. Earlier in the week he had rather reluctantly accompanied her and two student friends to the city to watch the float procession through the streets. He had only agreed because both friends happened to be unusually attractive, one tall, dark and athletic, the other petite and blonde like a doll. She knew her brother all too well! The three girls had thought the procession wonderful: all the historical scenes depicted by various towns, all the historical figures such as Jan van Riebeeck, Piet Retief and Paul Kruger represented by actual walking, talking people. Everything had made a big impression on them. To Kleinboet it had all been a big joke. When the float from the town of Worcester sailed past, he succumbed to uncontrollable laughter. The scene had something to do with Piet Retief’s Manifesto, that was clear from the bevy of young girls in Voortrekker dresses and bonnets, but at the front end of the float a pole was held aloft by a few muscle-bound, bare-chested blond young men. It wasn’t clear why they were half-naked or what they intended doing with the pole.

‘Probably hoping to put one of the girls up it,’ Kleinboet had said, weak with laughter.

Colette wasn’t sure if he meant what she thought he meant. She quickly turned her attention to the next float, hoping that her two friends hadn’t heard her rude brother. But then Vera, the athletic one, said, ‘No man, it isn’t a pole, it’s a torch! Probably symbolic of the light of civilisation which the Voortrekkers carried deeper into Africa.’ Dead serious.

Then you should’ve heard Kleinboet laugh.

Now that she thinks back on it, it also strikes her as funnier than it did at the time. Or perhaps it is the sweet pink sparkling wine that makes everything seem funnier than usual. She takes a few more gulps. Just to check if it might not make it even funnier.

‘The Van Riebeeck Festival has made us proud of our country,’ Frans Louw MP is saying, ‘proud of the fine civilisation that a small group of white settlers were able to establish on a dark, uncivilised continent, proud to be Afrikaans!’

‘Hear, hear!’ a few of the young men shout.

Now the father of the bride hits his stride. His phrases get longer, his pauses fewer. He expresses the belief that this exceptional couple will in the years to come make us even prouder to belong to an exceptional nation with a God-given destiny. He predicts an exceptionally bright future for them and their children …

‘Children by the dozen!’ a cheeky young man interjects, which makes everyone laugh and the bride blush.

Colette hears her tummy rumble with hunger, and drains the rest of the sparkling wine in her glass. The second groomsman fills her glass again. Every time he looks at her, his face assumes the same amused expression it wore in the church. It really isn’t the reaction she had hoped to elicit from her brother’s older and more worldly-wise friends at this wedding celebration.

At last the father of the bride has said his piece, and everyone has raised their glasses one more time. Now for the groom’s speech, then the eating and dancing can begin. Although she has no idea who the wretched third bridesmaid is supposed to dance with. Her father will have to dance with her mother, of that her mother will make sure, and her older brother isn’t much of a dancer. Once he has got the obligatory first waltz with his bride out of the way as quickly as possible, he will feign generosity by giving all the male guests a chance to dance with the bride. Kleinboet is a good dancer, but with so many pretty girls present he isn’t likely to waste his time with his sister. And she holds out little hope of being asked by any other attractive young men, not in this bridesmaid’s dress that makes her look like a canary with jaundice.

The atmosphere in the stifling hall changes the instant Ouboet gets to his feet. A wave of excitement ripples through the younger guests like wind through a wheat field. Ouboet has barely opened his mouth when Pietman starts to roar, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, and right away a chorus of male voices joins in the singing. Ouboet waits patiently, with a forced smile, before he tries again.

‘Everyone warned me this was going to be the most difficult speech of my life …’

No one hears another word, because Pietman has started singing ‘Why was he born so beautiful’. This time Ouboet tries to continue speaking before the last voices have died away. Which only provokes a repeat of the chorus: He’s no bloody use to anyone, he’s no bloody use at all. And again and again. Every time Ouboet manages a phrase, the jolly good fellows are back with their thundering chorus. Some are beating their fists on the tables and others stamping their feet on the floor, and the noise becomes completely deafening.

Across the table from Colette Kleinboet is singing at the top of his voice. He must enjoy being able to shut up his pedantic older brother for a change. Next to her Hannes is also revelling in Ouboet’s dilemma. The second groomsman isn’t an unattractive fellow, not as forward as Pietman and not as pious as Ouboet either. The only person present who appears to feel sorry for Ouboet is Mammie. She is sitting at the main table, half-hidden by a bunch of yellow and pink roses, watching Ouboet with the anxious expression she usually gets when she urgently needs to pee. Or maybe she does in fact need to pee. In that case there is no one in the hall who pities the groom.

Out of the corner of her eye Colette sees Sina in an old floral-print dress of Mammie’s standing right at the back of the hall next to the crippled Mister Giuseppe with his heavy camera. It occurs to her that the little Italian is darker skinned than Sina with her sallow complexion. And she cannot help wondering what these two outsiders, these two rare birds of another feather, must think of the God-given destiny of the Afrikaner.

Re: Contact!

• Colette Niemand 17/8/2007

To thinalusapho@iafrica.com

I am thinking of you, my precious, I think of you all the time. While I endure the cold Cape winter, I am riding alongside you in Lisbon’s cheerful yellow trams. Then I forget all about being cold, and old, and almost manage to feel young and hopeful again. Until I hear the rain tapping on my bedroom window and see the bare trees in the garden. Then I remember where I am and how late the hour. Then I get off the tram, come and lie down on my bed, and think of long ago, of how badly I had wanted to get away before it was too late, and then I wonder why I came back at all. And then I think about you once more. I think of you all the time, sweetheart.