Читать книгу Look At Me - Nataniël - Страница 12

I sit in the back of the car. Next to me is my baby brother in his car seat, a primitive contraption of metal, canvas and leather, a grotesque garden chair minus the feet. My mother sits in front with a basket on her lap. At the back of the car my father is putting the last of the set of blue suitcases in the boot. He gets in the car and turns the key. We reverse into the street, my father pulls the hand brake, it goes kkrrr! like when the dog bites through a bone. My father gets out, closes the gate and gets back in the car. We drive past the small vineyard, up the hill, past The Stoepsusters’ house, and turn right. My stomach feels hollow, the anxiety mouse starts gnawing at me. For nice things – Grandmother’s Wellington, shopping trips, Johannesburg’s Cape (that’s what Grandfather called Paarl) – we always turn left.

Where are we going? I ask.

We’re on our way to the church camp, says my mother.

Where is it? I ask.

A little bit further, says my father.

What are we going to do there? I ask.

We’re going to visit, says my father.

And sing, says my mother. We’re going to read the Bible, tell you children stories, we’re going to hold hands and dance in circles. And we are going to pray a lot.

But we can pray at home too, I say.

Sometimes a person needs to go away for a little while, says my mother. You need to be with people who think and believe like you do, you need silence so you can concentrate.

Krst, krst, gnaws the mouse.

But we can concentrate at home, I say.

Sometimes children need to talk less and just be obedient, says my father.

He turns left up a narrow street, stops before a metal gate, winds down his window and waves his arm. Someone pushes open the gate and we drive inside and park in a carport. There are lots of cars, rows and rows of them in parallel.

Here we are, says my father, Let’s go look for our rondavel.

Our home was at the upper end of Riebeek-Kasteel, the church camp was right in the middle of Riebeek West. The distance between the two was six kilometres. My parents had packed every suitcase we owned, strapped my little brother to an insect and woken my anxiety mouse so we could drive less than ten minutes to dance in circles and to concentrate.

My father opens the boot.

Rugby ball, soccer ball, beach ball, I brought them all, he says, There are lots of children here and plenty of space, you can play until you get tired.

Those were the last words I heard. After that I saw mouths moving, saw eyes blink, saw the sun rise and set, saw people scurry about, saw hands playing the guitar, saw matches light lanterns and saw blankets cover mothers and their babies. There was a row of mini-buildings with pointy roofs; cement, asbestos, corrugated iron, wood, cardboard, who knew what had been used to manufacture these human holders, who knew why my father called them rondavels. There were a few trees in a big open area with poor grass (my one uncle’s first wife always put on her sunglasses in the fear that she would have to drive past poor grass. Hate it! she sighed. Apparently this was the result when a lawn got just enough water not to die, but too little to be properly green), a hall where gatherings took place, a side veranda where meals were served at long tables, and next door a square building that consisted of a storeroom and a big kitchen. Where these two buildings met there was a square, dark and out of sight, with rubbish bins and crates and gardening equipment. I came to have a look every day. At some stage one of the world’s big and invisible rulers, Perversion, gives every child an invisible little helper that leads him to places and situations where improprieties – naughty things – might take place. It was here that, on the last day, when the expectation of going back home gradually restored my hearing, I saw two workers having a fist fight and one hissed the deadly command, Die, pig, die.

One ray of light during my time at the camp: there was beef mince, lots of beef mince. Bobotie, shepherd’s pie, sausage, meatballs, round and rectangular meat pies, spaghetti with mince and tomato, mince with fried onions and grated cheese . . . I was amazed at the big metal containers, the amounts, the smell. The only big amounts in my life were the dormitory slop and the stench of it. Here it was almost festive. Three meals a day appeared from the big camp kitchen, also tea in the morning and warm milk at night. Each of these five helpings was supplemented with bread. Toast, sandwiches, thick slices of fresh bread lined up on trays, bread soldiers dipped in egg and grilled, also bread pudding. I only knew two kinds of bread: shop bread, white, brown or wholegrain, soft and ordinary; and farm bread, crunchy crust on the outside, solid and snow white on the inside. The bread in the camp was different: big slices, good enough to eat without butter, looked home-baked, but delivered twice a day at the big metal gate. I called it prayer bread. And encountered it only once afterwards, more than ten years later when I again attended a church camp, I was in love with a vision of a youth worker and had heard there were open showers on the grounds.

Back to Riebeek West: On the second-last evening everyone sits in the hall, on chairs, crates, cushions and laps; a white cloth has been strung against the wall up front, at the back is a film projector on a high table. Someone turns off the lights and monsters begin to jump around on the white cloth. A few people turn around but then the movie starts behaving.

A grey city appears, full of pillars, massive buildings, women with braided hair, men in long garments, soldiers with swords, horses, coaches without roofs and markets where live animals are peddled.

It’s Rome, my mother mouths.

Is it near Wellington? I ask.

No, my mother’s mouth explains, It’s overseas, hundreds of years ago.

A man has golden leaves on his head. Red fabric hangs from his shoulder and a white cloak drags behind him. (I now know that the actor was Peter Ustinov.) He is furious, he walks up and down in a marble hall, he balls his fists and yells at a row of anxious people, I hear nothing.

Emperor Nero, explains my father’s mouth.

The mouse is awake and eats at me. At once the whole cloth is full of people, thousands, they sit in rows in a big round place. This is the most people I have ever seen, also the biggest place, a roofless church, a tent-less circus, a treeless athletics day. The mouse is suddenly quiet, both of us know big trouble is coming.

In the middle of the crowd is an empty circle. Small groups of people begin to appear, they look scared and hold on to each other.

The Christians, explains my mother’s mouth.

Nero lifts his fist and then jerks it downwards.

Rubbish! That is all my father’s mouth forms.

Inside a thick wall a barred gate is raised and one lion after another slinks into my young life. Their big paws slash at the Christians, the thousands of people jump up and shake their fists in the air, Nero smiles broadly, a thin woman next to him feasts on a bunch of grapes. Against a cloth in Riebeek West: lunacy. I can’t hear myself, but I know I’m crying, on my mother’s lap my baby brother wakes up and looks at me, he smiles, a lion rips off someone’s arm, my father picks me up and carries me outside, a strange woman brings me sugar water.

A few months later we visited Grandmother. One afternoon we drove to Paarl to see a movie. There was a theatre close to the Tower Church, unlike at the drive-ins we sat very close to the screen, like the lions at the church camp everything was too big and too close. The movie was Hawaii, an odd story with Julie Andrews in the lead role; it had come out three years earlier, but was shown on that day in Paarl.

Julie Andrews and a bunch of English people in uniforms sailed in an old-fashioned ship on a rough sea. There they met the queen or leader of the island. She was a giantess, she was fascinated with the ship and wanted to see the inside. Because she was too big to climb the ladder at the side, a primitive crane had to be built. Unlike at the church camp, all my senses were fully functional and I could hear everything. Were the waves too rough? Was the music too dramatic? By the time the unwieldy body started swinging to and fro above the ship, things became just too much. I cried ferociously, possibly screamed, I was amazed (and a little impressed) by my volume, but I couldn’t stop. Again my father had to carry me out, again I was soothed with food.

Until then the universe had consisted of Riebeek-Kasteel, Riebeek West, Wellington and Paarl. Rome and Hawaii were unthinkable; that people could think up such things, so cruel and on such a scale and without warning, was unthinkable, that each time after such a disillusionment we could drive back home like nothing was wrong, it was unthinkable. Overwhelming, inconceivable, impossible.