Читать книгу Forget-me-not-Blues - Marita van der Vyver - Страница 6

Mammie has dolled herself up for their excursion into town, painted her mouth red as a fire engine, waved her blonde hair and pinned it up under a small blue hat that looks almost like a soldier’s cap. She is wearing gloves and high-heeled shoes, and her last unladdered pair of silk stockings. Her dress has big shoulders and a thin white belt in the waist, and a skirt that shows rather a lot of leg. It’s not that she wants to show her legs, she has had to explain to Ouma Trui on the farm, but with a war on cloth has become scarce and hemlines shorter, what can you do?

Colette cannot take her eyes off her mother, all the way from Rondebosch to Cape Town, as they ride gently rocking on the electric train. It is hot and the dark green leather seat feels sticky against the back of her knees. Stop fidgeting, Mammie admonishes, you will crease your dress. Colette too has been dolled up for the city. Her dress was cut from an old dress of Mammie’s, but you would never guess it, because the blue floral print still looks almost new, and of course Mammie is clever with a needle and thread. She has smocked the bodice and sewn on a round white collar and a row of tiny blue Bakelite buttons down the back. Make do and mend, Mammie says, that is every patriotic woman’s motto these days.

Colette has an idea she may be getting a bit too big for smocked dresses but Mammie says nonsense, think of all the poor little girls in Europe who have no dresses to wear at all. Who don’t even have a roof over their heads. Colette doesn’t understand how her smocked dress is going to help the little girls in Europe get a roof over their heads, but she realises it has something to do with patriotism, so she wears the dress without complaining.

They are going shopping, new stockings and a step-in for Mammie, a paper doll for Colette and a pretty headscarf for Sina, the Coloured girl Mammie fetched on the farm earlier this year to work for them. Shame, she misses her people terribly, Mammie says, she is no more than a child, really. Barely a few years older than Colette. It must be awful, Colette says, to be taken away from your home and your family to work for strangers in a strange house. ‘I don’t know what I would do if it happened to me!’ ‘It won’t, dear,’ her mother reassures her. ‘You’re a white child.’

Colette isn’t sure there are any paper dolls left in the city since cloth isn’t the only thing that has become scarce because of the war. But Mammie is always saying we mustn’t complain because this sunny country of ours is paradise compared to overseas. In England there are no stockings to be had at all, not silk stockings or rayon stockings or nylon stockings or anything, those poor English girls rub gravy onto their legs to make them look brown. Colette really hopes they will find stockings today because the thought that Mammie might want to rub the gravy from Sunday’s chicken onto her body gives her the horrors.

After the shopping they are going to order tea and cake at Stuttafords’ tea room in Adderley Street, and then they will go to the bioscope, too, before catching the train home this afternoon. In for a penny, Mammie says, and laughs excitedly. It’s not every day we two girls go to town, right? Colette laughs too. She loves it when her mother talks about ‘we two girls’, as if Colette is much older than nine.

It is true they don’t go to town often, even though they live much closer now than when she was smaller. Mammie says in these dark days it is everyone’s duty to do less buying and gadding about. Don’t STRAIN the trains, they read on big posters at the stations, with funny drawings of travellers in trolleys drawn by elephants and camels. At night Mammie knits scarves and hats for the soldiers, because her younger brother is fighting in North Africa. Colette is also trying to knit a scarf, but she cannot imagine any soldier wanting to wear such a lopsided scarf with so many holes. Deddy teases her and says never mind, what Uncle David needs in North Africa is a fly swatter, not a warm scarf.

Then Mammie gets cross and says it isn’t about Uncle David, it’s about the fight against the Nazis. Everyone must pull their weight, and she is pulling her weight with her knitting needles. Then Kleinboet puts a rolled-up piece of newspaper in his mouth to represent Churchill’s fat cigar, and says in a deep voice: ‘We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields, we shall fight them behind our knitting needles, we shall NEVER surrender!’ Ever the clown in the family, Mammie always says.

But her father asks, what have the English ever done for us? Why should we help them in their war? Deddy was born in the year 1900 when a handful of Boers were battling the mighty British Empire, as he regularly reminds his children. And ever since he started working at the big new hospital in the city and they came to live among the English in Rondebosch, he has become awfully preachy about Afrikaans.

‘Do you realise, Letty, that our language wasn’t officially recognised until just before you were born? Do you have any idea how long we had to fight the English to accomplish this? When I was at school I was punished if I spoke Afrikaans. Then I would have to stand in a corner wearing a paper hat with “dunce” written on it.’

‘What does “dunce” mean, Deddy?’

‘Go look it up in the dictionary. It is important that you learn to speak good English as well. We shall speak the language of the conqueror as well as the conqueror,’ Deddy says with a grand English accent, and gives her a wink. ‘That is our revenge, Lettylove.’

‘But Deddy …’

‘And you may as well stop with this Deddy business now. It was cute when you were small but now you are growing up. Call me Pappie or Pa or Vader or whatever is easiest for you.’

She has been trying for months, but ‘Vader’ sounds too much like praying, ‘Pa’ is so curt, like a dog barking, and she hasn’t managed to get used to ‘Pappie’ yet. Deddy is still the easiest. When she remembers, she calls him Deddy-Pappie. Or Pappie-Deddy.

But however annoyed Deddy may be with the English, at least he hasn’t sided with the Nazis like his brother on the farm. The last time they visited Somerverdriet, her father and Oom Kleingert had argued constantly. About the war, about Mammie’s English relatives and, while they were at it, about Mammie’s dresses that had become so short.

Back at home her father had astonished them all by shaving off his short black moustache.

‘Just so no one will ever make the mistake again of thinking that I admire Adolf Hitler,’ he had announced. ‘My enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend.’

Te-dum, te-dum, te-dum, Colette’s heart beats with anticipation when the train pulls into Cape Town. She no longer feels quite such a country bumpkin as when they were still living in Wellington, but the crowds rushing everywhere, the hooting cars, the busy streets and the green-and-creamy-yellow trolleybuses still frighten her a little. And now there are soldiers, too, from all over the world, in all kinds of uniforms she doesn’t recognise, men in kilts with ugly knees that give her the ­heebie-jeebies, boys who seem younger than her sixteen-year-old Ouboet, old men with rows of shiny medals on their chests, even women in uniform!

She keeps a tight grip on her mother’s gloved hand and walks with quick little steps to keep up with her mother’s clacking high-heeled shoes. Her own black mary janes are polished to such a shine she can see her own reflection in them if she bends over far enough.

‘Colette!’ her mother scolds when she almost collides with a lamppost. ‘Pick up your chin and watch where you’re going. Don’t act so provincial.’ But Mammie does walk more slowly now, which means Colette has time to study the advertisements on the sides of buses and buildings properly. Burlington Shirts and Sportswear, she reads above a picture of a boy with a shining white smile in shining white cricket clothes who reminds her of Kleinboet. How lovely the city must look at night when the slogans on the sides of the buildings are lit! It is something she has only ever seen in photographs in newspapers and magazines.

At the start of the war, like everyone else in the suburbs of Cape Town, they got blackout curtains for the house. To Deddy the dark streets at night had been almost like a gift. He fiddled with his telescope every night. To a stargazer a pitch-black night sky is of course something wonderful. Three years into the war no one really believes that Cape Town will come under attack any more, and once again most of the buildings are lit. It is only Mammie who maintains one should rather stay at home in the evenings and knit. Colette wouldn’t tell her mother, of course, but there are times when she rather enjoys the war. At school there are drills in case of a bomb attack, then they must dive under their wooden desks with their arms held above their heads, which usually ends in giggling and joking. Much more fun than arithmetic or Bible study.

Fletcher & Cartwrights for Fashion and Foods, she reads on a building on the corner opposite, but Mammie is already tugging at her arm to cross Adderley Street quickly before the traffic light turns red. She is not yet used to the red-orange-green lights you have to obey, or to the overhead electric wires powering the trolleybuses, nor to the Coloured men in smart suits. She gapes at everything. Close your mouth or you’ll swallow a fly, Mammie says when Colette tries, with her head tilted way back, to count how many storeys there are in the enormous Stuttafords building. Four, five, six … She gets no further, because her mother has seized hold of her shoulders and is steering her through the large entrance into a crowd of people.

Inside the store her jaw drops even more. She doesn’t even care anymore if she swallows a fly. Not that she can imagine ever seeing a fly inside such a smart store. Even Mammie, who doesn’t like to look ‘provincial’, slows down to a snail’s pace on the way to the elevator so they can examine and admire everything along the way, the wonderful wares displayed in shiny glass cabinets, the smart shop girls behind the gleaming wooden counters, and the elegant shoppers, of course. At the elevator they are joined by a woman with long red nails, wearing a whopper of a diamond ring and a black fur coat. Colette wonders if she isn’t sweating an awful lot because the spring day is far too warm for such a coat, but she cannot smell any sweat, just a heavy scent that smells completely different from Mammie’s eau de cologne.

‘If you look around you would never guess there is a war on,’ Mammie says with a sigh. Colette cannot figure out if it is a happy or a disapproving sigh. Then the elevator’s sliding gate opens with a crunching sound. The old man who pushes the buttons greets the fur-coated woman like an old acquaintance. He is also wearing a uniform, a wine-red tunic with a cap on his head, but he looks too old and too jolly to be a soldier, more like someone who works in a circus. Every time the elevator door stutters open, he announces the floor as if it is some place he has always wanted to go, a white beach with palm trees or another planet, and then all the shoppers squeeze out through the doors even more eagerly. When Colette and Mammie get out at Ladies’ Lingerie, he winks at Colette and she quickly covers her mouth with her hand to hide her grin, so Mammie won’t think she is acting provincial again.

‘Can’t I go look at the toys so long?’ she asks while her mother inspects the umpteenth step-in. Mammie holds up the strange contraption, fingers the straps for the stockings, tugs at the fabric to test the elastic, and wonders aloud if she should choose the white or flesh-coloured one. It gives Colette the creeps to think that in a few years’ time she will also have to wear a thing like that.

‘No, not on your own. What if you get lost?’ Mammie says. ‘And we have to get you bloomers, yours are all worn out.’

Colette instantly starts to sulk. She didn’t come to town to try on stupid bloomers for school, she came for the Judy Garland paper doll she desires with all her heart. Shirley Temple was supposed to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but then of course she was replaced by Judy Garland – not only in the film but also in Colette’s heart. She is mad about The Wizard of Oz, although Mammie predicts that after today’s matinee she might have a new favourite. They are going to see an animated picture at the Alhambra about a deer called Bambi.

Actually it doesn’t matter what they’re going to see, any film is an experience at the Alhambra, which looks like Aladdin’s fairytale castle. The balconies and ornate pillars on the gold-painted exterior, the enormous hall with soft velvet seats inside, the fake trees that look just like real ones and the ceiling that reminds one of a dark blue night sky with millions of twinkling stars, all of it is a marvel in Colette’s eyes. But now, unfortunately, she has to buy bloomers first.

Hours later, or so it seems to Colette, they have at long last bought the underwear and her cut-out doll and Sina’s headscarf. They are seated in Stuttafords’ tea room, on the balcony overlooking Adderley Street, and Mammie orders scones with strawberry jam and cream. Colette picks the tallest, fattest slice of chocolate cake she has ever seen. While they wait for the waitress to bring the tray, Colette admires her Judy Garland paper doll and pages through the booklet with all the clothes she will cut out when she gets home. She is happiest about the Wizard of Oz outfit, a light blue pinafore over a white blouse with puffed sleeves, a red bow for the hair exactly like Snow White’s, light blue socks and, of course, the sparkling red shoes. Oh, for a pair of red shoes with heels like these! ‘If I ever have another fancy dress, I want to dress like Dorothy,’ she says with a dreamy sigh.

‘Hmmm,’ her mother says. ‘Hopefully this time half the guests won’t turn up dressed like Voortrekkers.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that, Mammie. Where we live now most of the children don’t even know what a Voortrekker looks like. It is a good thing my name at least sounds a little English or the girls next door wouldn’t want to play with me.’

‘Colette isn’t English,’ Mammie says with her nose in the air. ‘It is French.’

‘Why did you give me a French name?’

‘Because it goes with Cronjé. And because both Deddy and I are descended from the Huguenots.’

‘But why Colette? Rather than …’ She hastily tries to think of other French names, and remembers about the queen who lost her head. ‘Rather than Antoinette or Suzette or something like that?’

‘I once read a story by a French writer named Colette and I thought it was pretty …’ Mammie smiles a little sheepishly, which makes her look like a young girl. Then she touches her swept-up hair under the soldier’s cap and asks: ‘Surely you wouldn’t have preferred that we named you after one of your grandmothers? Gertruida Aletta or Johanna Magdalena?’

‘No,’ Colette giggles behind her hand, ‘I would rather be Colette. I just wanted to …’

The roar of a cannon close by gives her such a fright she swallows the rest of her words. The Nazis, is her first wild thought, as hundreds of pigeons take off from the window ledges and roofs of the buildings around them. She waits for the customers in the tea room to dive under the tables with their hands over their heads, the way the children were taught at school, but to her astonishment something even stranger happens. Instead of jumping up and rushing around and falling down flat, everyone seems petrified. No one moves, even the waitress who was on her way over with the tray with their tea and scones and chocolate cake, freezes on the spot as if she has turned into a statue. A hushed silence fills the air. Colette glances down at Adderley Street and realises that all the pedestrians have also turned to stone.

It is the strangest sight.

She opens her mouth to ask what is going on, but her mother gestures sh! with a finger on her lips and stares intently at the tablecloth. Most people are looking down, as if they are deep in thought. Or as if they have fallen asleep with their eyes open?

Then all at once everyone starts talking and eating and drinking again – just as suddenly as when they turned to stone – and the pedestrians on Adderley Street also come back to life. The waitress fusses around them arranging the teacups on the table, and within seconds there are so many voices and city noises filling Colette’s ears that she wonders if perhaps it has all been a dream.

‘Mammie?’ she asks dazed.

‘That was the noon gun, Colette.’ Her mother’s thinly tweezed eyebrows pencil two arches high on her forehead. ‘Don’t tell me you have never heard it before?’

Colette shakes her head. ‘But why did everyone freeze?’

‘Oh, it’s the two-minute silence,’ her mother explains while she pours their tea, ‘to remember everyone who has died in the war.’

Colette drags the enormous slice of chocolate cake closer, a strange hollow feeling in her stomach. ‘Only our dead people? Or the Nazis’ dead people too?’

‘I don’t know if one can talk of “ours” and “theirs” when it comes to death, sweetheart. Dead is dead.’

She is suddenly not sure she can finish such a big piece of cake by herself. ‘Do you know someone who has died in the war, Mammie?’

‘No one close to me, not yet, thank goodness.’ Her mother blinks her eyes quickly and takes a sip of tea. She is probably thinking of Uncle David in North Africa. ‘Let us hope and pray that it is all over before Ouboet is old enough to enlist.’

‘He won’t,’ Colette says reassuringly. ‘I heard him say to Klein­boet that he won’t go and fight for England. He said maybe Oom Kleingert was right, maybe the Nazis weren’t the enemy …’

Mammie’s hands flutter from her teacup to her cheeks that have suddenly turned as pale as death, and she closes her eyes as if she has seen something that is too terrible to contemplate.

And suddenly Colette would give up anything – her new Judy Garland paper doll, Bambi at the Alhambra, even this entire excursion to town – if she could only take back her words. She will have to learn to hold her tongue, like Mammie always tells her. Sometimes silence is golden, Colette.

Silence?

• Colette Niemand 9/8/2007

To ?

Sometimes silence is golden? My darling child, I long to write to you, I long to say no, I do not know Lisbon’s lovely Metro stations, nor the long graceful bridge over the Tagus, it was all built after my time. The same is true of the statue of Fernando Pessoa at his little outdoor cafe table. When I was there the melancholy poet had not yet risen from the dead to amuse tourists. No one really knew of him yet, except other melancholy souls like my beloved guide.

But now it seems as if that guide has also risen from the dead. And it makes me so anxious that I am struck dumb all over again. Surely I cannot write that I do not share your sweet dreams, that I have been troubled by ghosts from the past again these last few nights? Portuguese ghosts, of course, but much older wandering spirits too. Deddy in the days he still wore his little Hitler moustache; Mammie always whispering sh, what will the people say; my beautiful uncle who fled to Australia; they all came to disturb my sleep last night.

Uncle David crushed a piece of chocolate cake in his fist and smeared the brown icing over the scars on his face, his once handsome face so horribly disfigured that I only recognised him by his soldier’s uniform. ‘I bear the wounds of the battles I fought,’ he said reproachfully. ‘But the worst wounds are those you cannot see.’ I shut my eyes and stopped my ears but I could still hear him, like a voice inside my own head. Now that I am dead, he said, I regret everything that I missed.

I woke up drenched in sweat, my skin on fire, feverish. I expect I am coming down with something. Is it possible to get sick from remembering?

No, this isn’t something I can share with you, sweetheart, you are too young to handle so many ghosts. Perhaps my mother was right all along. Perhaps it is sometimes best to keep quiet. I would rather not send you this letter.

But from far across the sea, from a wintry Cape of Storms, I wish you shining golden summer dreams.