Читать книгу Forget-me-not-Blues - Marita van der Vyver - Страница 8

‘Seën, Heer, wat ons eet en laat ons nimmer U vergeet.’ When Deddy says grace before lunch on Sunday, he pronounces every word slowly and clearly, as if he has just thought it up that instant. He likes to remind his children that the first Bible in Afrikaans wasn’t published until after Colette was born. To them praying in Afrikaans is a matter of course; to him it remains a privilege.

Then he rolls up his shirtsleeves, flexes his shoulders like a conductor just before he raises his baton, picks up the razor-sharp knife and a large fork – at this point Colette always imagines she hears the thundering opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – and starts to carve the roast beef.

Mammie is convinced that, because he is a doctor, he can carve meat better than anyone she knows. Deddy says he learnt everything he knows about carving meat from his father and grandfather on the farm, not in medical school. Nonsense, Mammie says, he has the hands of a doctor, not a butcher. Then Deddy grins and says he’s afraid Mammie has always been a snob.

On the table along with the roast beef and gravy there is a chicken pie, as well as pumpkin purée, sweet potatoes, cauliflower with a white sauce, baked beans and beetroot salad. And of course rice and potatoes. Mammie dishes up, and holds each plate in front of Deddy so he can arrange a slice of meat half on top of the other food, because by then the plate is full to overflowing. It’s two years after the war has ended, and white bread and decent meat are still scarce in many homes, but thanks to Ouma Trui who regularly sends fruit, vegetables, home-made bread, honey, butter, eggs, chickens and red meat from Somerverdriet to the city, the Cronjés of Rondebosch never go hungry. On weekends, when Colette’s brothers are home from boarding school, they eat as if there is no tomorrow.

‘Is the roast beef in honour of the British king?’ Ouboet teases when he takes his plate.

Vexed, Mammie clicks her tongue. ‘As if we never had roast beef before the king came to visit.’

‘I’m just asking. The way Colette has been carrying on about the princesses recently, I thought …’

‘I haven’t been “carrying on”,’ Colette objects. ‘I wouldn’t dare while you’re around. Everyone knows you don’t like the royals!’

‘Children,’ Mammie admonishes.

‘Would Her Royal Highness graciously pass me the salt?’ Kleinboet asks Mammie, an entire potato stuffed in his cheek, his British accent so exaggerated that everyone bursts out laughing.

Thank heavens for a brother with a sense of humour, ­Colette finds herself thinking frequently, because the eldest one is becoming more and more difficult. Kleinboet is in matric, in Deddy’s old school in Paarl, and Ouboet became a Matie last year. He is so proud of the university’s maroon striped blazer, he even wears it at home on weekends. A promising student, everyone says, and a natural leader, a young man for whom a Bright Future is being predicted. But to Colette he is above all a pedantic spoilsport. Ever since King George and his family stepped ashore in Cape Town two months ago, he hasn’t stopped taunting her. All because she and Mammie joined thousands of people on the sidewalk that day to wait for the royal procession.

All right, perhaps she had been a little too excited about the long black car with the Union Jack in which they cruised through the city streets, and the funny way the queen waved at the crowds, with the back of her hand, like an elderly ballerina. She may also have chattered rather a lot about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, and their hats and gloves and hair and everything that had seemed so gloriously beautiful. Still, that didn’t make her a rooinek or a traitor!

‘I was at the Youth Rally on Monday,’ she says, ‘and it wasn’t just an English affair, not at all. There was folk dancing too. They sang “Jan Pierewiet” and “Sarie Marais” and …’

‘All in honour of the mighty British Empire,’ Ouboet says, shaking his head.

‘No, in honour of the princess’s twenty-first birthday. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her, and the orchestra played “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, and there were Coloured children dancing in white dresses, the cutest little one on tippy toes right out in front. I so wished you were there to see it, Mammie!’

‘You weren’t there, Mammie?’ Ouboet sounds surprised. ‘Tired of the royals already?’

‘It was a Youth Rally, Ouboet,’ Mammie says. ‘Sadly I no longer rank among the youth.’

She smiles coquettishly and pats her blonde curls, which these days she dyes to hide the threads of grey, and looks at Deddy expectantly. It is his cue to say something like, ah, my dear, to me you will always be young and beautiful. But Deddy is looking at his plate, chewing his meat, his thoughts elsewhere.

It is true that Mammie looks rather good for someone who is already in her forties, but plumper than when Colette was small, she moans and groans while trying to fasten the hooks on her step-in girdle. Still, nothing a good step-in can’t hide, she frequently assures Colette. Today she is wearing a blue-and-grey checked wrap dress with a wide belt in the style of the American designer Claire McCardell which, as usual, she has sewn herself. Girls like us can happily wear blue every day, she tells Colette, it brings out the blue in our eyes. Colette no longer finds it all that cute when her mother talks about ‘girls like us’. Mammie is far too old to be calling herself a girl. She is now a tannie, and sometimes Colette wishes she would act her age and be a little less like the silly flapper she was twenty years ago. Yet, she has an idea that Mammie will still be a flapper at heart when she is eighty. A pathetic little grey-haired woman waiting with a toothless grin for her husband to tell her that she will always be young and beautiful in his eyes.

At the thought of this, Colette becomes so anxious that she carries on talking with a mouth full of roast beef. ‘The princess made a speech too. She speaks the most beautiful English!’

‘I am very glaaad to see so many young people heaahr todaaay.’ Kleinboet imitates the princess’s high-pitched little voice and royal accent so well that everyone starts laughing again.

‘Well, I for one am very glad she’s now boarded the ship back to England,’ Ouboet says, and he takes an enormous bite of chicken pie. ‘Now we can hopefully forget about the British royal house and for a change start concentrating on our own problems in the Union.’

‘Until next time,’ Colette teases. ‘She said she hoped to come back soon.’

‘We will see,’ Ouboet says in an ominous tone. ‘That will depend on who will govern the country in the future. Or what am I saying, Pa? Pa!’

Deddy blinks as if someone has suddenly shone a bright flash­light into his eyes. ‘Sorry, I just can’t stop thinking about Peers’ Cave where we were yesterday. The Fish Hoek Man’s brain was so much bigger than we have believed until now. We actually still know so little about our prehistoric ancestors, don’t we?’

‘Tsk, dear, you worry far too much about what we do and don’t know. All I know is that the view from the cave took my breath away. The entire Peninsula and both the oceans. Whoever the Fish Hoek Man was, he was clever enough to choose a magnificent view for his home.’

‘What I would like to know, Pa,’ Kleinboet says, ‘is how you managed to talk Mammie and Colette into climbing all the way up to the cave. They must’ve complained the whole way.’

‘Actually, they didn’t.’ Deddy smiles. ‘I didn’t talk them into it. In fact, I bribed them. Promised them that if the princesses visited us again, I would join them in the hot sun to wave at the procession. So let us hope you are right, Ouboet. If our people come into power, the princesses won’t get another invitation soon.’

Deddy and Ouboet grin at each other, just like two crooks who are hatching a plot.

‘Who are our people?’ Colette asks.

‘I’ll go get the dessert,’ Mammie says, and gets up hastily. Discussion over.

After lunch Mammie washes the dishes because Sina isn’t working today. Colette and Kleinboet dry them off and put them away. Colette is rather curious about what Sina does on her free Sundays. The other live-in maids in the neighbourhood are all older and speak English, which Sina struggles to understand, or a Bantu language, which Sina doesn’t even try to understand. Colette suspects that she mostly stays in her outside room paging through the old magazines Mammie saves for her. The last time Colette was in the outside room she helped Sina cut out pretty colour photographs of nature to decorate the bare walls. Deddy put a stop to that. Stick to your own kind, Letty. Deddy is never mean to Sina, he always treats her politely, but he evidently doesn’t consider her the same kind as the Cronjés.

While she packs away the clean glasses, Colette whistles the melody of ‘Jan Pierewiet’, which has been stuck in her head ever since the Youth Rally, until Mammie warns from behind the sink that a whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men. To keep the peace, she switches to humming, although she has never understood why a humming woman is more acceptable than a whistling one. When she bends down to put away a stack of plates in a low cupboard, Kleinboet flicks a wet dishcloth at her bottom.

‘My, my! Could this be a nice sturdy Bushman bottom I see on my skinny little sister? Fighting off the boys yet, Lettylove?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Colette giggles.

‘Well, if they start pestering you, remember you have two older brothers who will protect your honour. That is more than poor Princess Elizabeth can say.’

‘She doesn’t need brothers, she has bodyguards. Who treat her better than my brothers have ever treated me.’

‘Did you hear that, Ma? Haven’t we always treated her like a princess?’

‘Like a princess.’ Mammie smiles at the soap suds in the sink. ‘Our own Princess Lettylove.’

‘But if Ouma Trui could see how tight those pants are across Princess Lettylove’s bottom, she would have a fit.’

‘On the farm I wouldn’t have been allowed to wear pants on a Sunday even if they hung on my body like a sack!’

‘And on any other day it is rather reluctantly tolerated,’ Mammie sighs. Ever since Deddy and Oom Kleingert started arguing about the Ossewabrandwag, Mammie has visited Somerverdriet with a sad and wintry heart. ‘Your grandparents are old, they don’t know any better, you can’t blame them for not understanding the modern world. But that brother of your father’s really has no excuse for being so old-fashioned!’

‘Auntie Wilma is even worse,’ Colette complains. ‘There are so many things you’re not allowed to do on a Sunday. You can’t knit or sew, or you’re putting a needle into the Lord’s eye; you can’t laugh or make jokes because after joy comes sorrow; you’re not allowed to wear pants or lipstick; and don’t ask me why, you’re not even allowed to play with paper dolls! Not that I still want to play with paper dolls,’ she adds quickly before her brother can start teasing her again. ‘I’m just saying. It seems to me that all you’re allowed to do is sit with folded hands and wait for the day to end.’

‘While the servants do all the work,’ Kleinboet says with mock sanctimoniousness. ‘Then they can go to hell instead of the Whites because they’ve desecrated the Sabbath.’

‘No, wait, Kleinboet, now you’re going too far!’ Mammie objects.

‘Are you scared Ouboet will hear me, Ma?’

Mammie scrubs a saucepan so viciously that soap suds splash onto the floor. It is a good thing she has tied an apron around her imitation Claire McCardell dress. They can hear Ouboet’s irate voice from the stoep, probably talking about things Mammie doesn’t want to hear while Deddy sucks on his pipe and nods.

While arranging the heavy silver cutlery they only use on Sundays in the flatware box with the royal blue velvet lining, Colette surreptitiously studies her brother. He looks much older than a matric boy in his khaki trousers and white shirt, with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up, his dark hair oiled and slicked back. Kleinboet is not exactly what she would call dashing; he is too short and stocky, his skin too dark, his nose too big. Yet he fares much better with the opposite sex than Ouboet who is far too serious to flirt, too busy building his Brilliant Future. The secret to making a girl fall in love with you is to make her laugh, Kleinboet believes. He relies on humour to reel in one girl after the other. The way he has reeled in his mother and little sister from childhood.

But Colette is curious about the origin of some of the more serious ideas he has expressed lately. Their older brother used to be his hero – hers too, of course, it was hard not to be impressed by someone for whom Great Things had been predicted almost from birth – but then one day Ouboet said that perhaps Oom Kleingert was right about the Ossewabrandwag after all, and about Deddy being a little too fond of the English because he had an English father-in-law. Kleinboet turned on him like a dog biting its owner. You have an English grandfather, he snarled at Ouboet, and a half-English mother! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? From that day on Kleinboet looked at his older brother differently.

Sometimes the strange things he said seemed calculated to provoke Ouboet.

‘Ouboet is nothing like Oom Kleingert.’ Mammie sounds as if she is talking to herself. She is scrubbing more slowly now, and staring out the window at the fruit trees in the backyard that are starting to show their autumn colours. ‘I don’t always agree with his ideas. But it is not as if he actually belongs to the Ossewa­brandwag, is it?’

‘Not as far as we know,’ Kleinboet mumbles.

What Colette knows, and Mammie probably too, is that Ouboet is dying to become a member of another secret organisation for Afrikaans men, some or other bond, but it isn’t one you can just up and join, you must wait until you are asked. Deddy was never asked. Apparently something to do with his half-English wife, but Colette can’t be sure because this is something no one ever talks about. Not in this or in any other Afrikaans household. It is a secret organisation, remember. You don’t talk about secrets.

More silence

• Colette Niemand 13/8/2007

To ?

Coimbra … Heavens, child, you are leading my heart like a stubborn horse back to sweet waters. All I have to do is drop my head and drink deeply.

I wouldn’t have felt at home there. Not in Coimbra or Sintra or Lisbon or anywhere else on your Portuguese route. I have, after all, spent a lifetime convincing myself of that – but ah, when you start sweet-talking me about aloes and bluegums and the like, plants that can take root in more than one place, I catch myself sliding back into doubt and self-reproach.

Sweet waters? Perhaps. But for me there is no peace in those green pastures. The water may be sweet and still, but down below the devils are dancing. Don’t imagine I do not know what I am talking about. The cruellest devil I know goes by the name of Memory, and this past week he has been back to torture me.

I suspect this is another letter I won’t send you.

Indeed my past is everything I have failed to be. No, it is not me who says so, it is Pessoa again. And don’t ask why I keep writing if I don’t intend you to see what I write. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I started keeping another journal in my old age? As if the last one didn’t cause enough destruction! And the last time I at least had a good excuse. I was young and confused. Fifty years later I am old and confused. The more things change?

The devil whose name is Memory brings no clarity, only longing and confused dreams. I have been longing for my family for days now, Deddy and Mammie and Kleinboet and Ouboet, yes, even Ouboet! I wish I could just see him one more time, to make him understand that I always loved him, even after we had nothing left to say to each other. Blood is blood, isn’t it? That, sweetheart, is something you have also learnt lately.

But I long above all for that period in my life, for those few carefree weeks in Portugal, when I got to know the two Fernandos, the dead poet and his exceptionally vigorous namesake who became my lover. I long for the courageous woman I was fifty years ago. Lord, I didn’t know it was possible to feel such deep longing for oneself!