Читать книгу The History of Man - Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu - Страница 11

Emil had seen the Selous School for Boys in his mind’s eye every day since he had learnt that he was to attend it. At night, he created dreamscapes in which the school was a sprawling and rambling grey Gothic building, complete with gargoyles as grotesque and ghastly as the ones he had seen on the picture postcard of Sanssouci in Potsdam, Germany, that was on Mr Bartleby’s desk. To heighten his trepidation, the school was, for whatever reason, situated in the middle of a moat that had a healthy population of piranhas living in it. As a result, Emil’s impression of the place was that there was no prospect of his ever being happy there.

Not a word was spoken during the long journey to the Midlands in the car his father had borrowed from Scott Fitzgerald, which did not help matters because what Emil needed more than anything else at that moment was the gentle cushion that his parents’ voices would have provided. His mother, sitting beside him in the back seat, had simply put her white-gloved right hand over his bare hands, smiled feebly at him and then stared out of the window. His father, sitting in the driver’s seat, would, by peering at the rear-view mirror, periodically steal glances at the space above Emil’s head and satisfy himself that all was well enough with his son.

As he sat there, as silent as a sphynx, Emil wondered what it was exactly that had been witnessed by his mother and him the day before and why it could not be spoken of. But, in lieu of asking this question, Emil gazed out of the window and attempted to console himself with the changing landscape: city, suburbs, smallholdings, farms, villages and, finally and refreshingly, wide open spaces with singing elephant grass.

As their journey carried them closer and closer to the grey Gothic castle with gargoyles, Emil gradually grasped that, whether he was ready to or not, he was growing up. He came to understand that this was his first step away from his parents and this terrified him more than the nightmares he had had of the Selous School for Boys. The momentousness of the occasion having dawned on him, Emil’s stomach, long queasy, lurched and he quickly squeezed his mother’s hand twice, which was his new way of communicating to her that he needed to relieve himself in a nearby bush. She, in turn, tapped the back of the driver’s seat and his father promptly parked the car on the side of the road.

Emil walked into the singing elephant grass by himself and had not walked far when he vomited all the three meals that the Coetzees had stopped to eat in silence at lay-by stations along the way. Although he felt physically better afterwards, he was not yet ready to go back to the car and join the silence of his parents. Thankfully, he heard voices in the distance and walked towards them until he saw an African homestead. A celebration. Women cooking on open fires. Men drinking from shared calabashes. Children chasing a tyre. Much conversation and lots of laughter. For a brief, mad moment, Emil contemplated joining them and partaking in their joy and happiness. But of course he could not.

He was about to turn back when he saw them – a hen and a chick straying dangerously far away from the homestead and towards the unknown environs around it. The chick seemed to apprehend the danger better than its mother, for it showed every sign of being anxious; it stayed close to her and wove itself between her legs even though on more than one occasion it had been pushed aside by her scratching feet. Frantic, the chick flew and landed on its mother’s back. It could not stay there for long, though, and soon fell down, only to play at her feet again.

Emil could not save himself from the fate that lay in wait for him but he could definitely save the chick, and so he moved abruptly in the elephant grass, making a sound that the chicken sensibly ran away from. The chick ran gratefully after its mother and away from danger, but, sadly, not away from its mother’s indifference.

Emil could not help but cry and, as he cried, he vowed to himself that this would be the last time that he would ever cry because, in that moment, he realised that tears did not change the workings of the world.

The Selous School for Boys, founded in the Midlands in 1918, was not the Gothic castle of Emil’s dreams but a series of red-roofed, white colonial-style buildings of varying size and stature that stood immaculately in a tranquil, lush and verdant valley. The school’s proud motto, ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, was the banner that one drove under as one entered the school’s premises. Emil read the school’s motto and was glad and relieved that it was not written in Latin. The school had the appearance of being welcoming enough, but Emil was not fooled; he had recently learnt that things were not always what they appeared to be on the surface.

Besides, Emil was only nine years old. What business did he have becoming a man?

Johan parked Scott Fitzgerald’s car in the parking berth, where there was much ado as various families lumbered out of cars, struggled with trunks and made both gregarious and polite conversation. There were boys as young as six who seemed to have been swallowed whole by their uniforms, there were boys of about Emil’s age who were all knobby knees and wide eyes, there were boys of about thirteen and fourteen who were determined to help their fathers carry their trunks, there were boys of sixteen and seventeen whose malicious eyes searched the crowd for newcomers. All these boys were to spend the next years of their lives together, becoming men. Emil felt sick to his stomach and was rather glad that he had already expelled its contents, otherwise this would have been a very unfortunate beginning indeed.

Once in the dormitory, Johan found Emil’s bed and put his trunk, which he had laboured with up the staircase, next to it. Gemma made up the bed with the linen they found folded at the foot of the bed. Emil removed select things (there was a list provided on his headboard) from his trunk and put them in the bedside cabinet. The Coetzees did these things in silence and afterwards sat awkwardly on the bed until the matron came in and smiled before telling the parents that they needed to leave.

Emil, with a heavy heart and wishing that he had the courage to break the silence, walked his parents back to Scott Fitzgerald’s car. His mother kissed him on both cheeks as she smiled back tears. Someone, unseen, made a whistling sound as Emil’s mother hugged him briefly before quickly getting in the back seat of the car. His father, gazing at the space above Emil’s head, offered him his hand, which Emil shook, hoping for so much more.

Emil stood on the tarred road as he watched the car drive away. He thought of the quiet that existed in that car and could not bring himself to wave goodbye to it because, even though it was new, he understood that it would be with them for some time.

Long after Scott Fitzgerald’s car had disappeared from sight, Emil found his way back to the dormitory that contained what was now his bed. He sat at the very edge of the bed and tried to stop his knees from knocking as he scanned the bare white walls, fluorescent strips of light affixed to the ceiling, rows of iron-rail beds with chipped and peeling cream-coloured paint, and made a failed attempt to feel welcomed by the room. When a bell finally rang, Emil made his way, as did all the boys, to the dining hall where Sunday Lunch, as the menu on the long table heralded, consisted of roast beef, boiled potatoes with parsley and mushy peas for the main course and Black Forest trifle for dessert. Emil ate but did not taste any of the meal that he was sure he would have enjoyed under different circumstances.

As leaden feet carried him up the stairs that led back to his dormitory, a group of older boys passed him and said that they could still smell his mother’s milk on him. Emil, understanding full well what they meant by that, regretted having promised himself, only earlier that day, never to cry again.

The silver lining was that at no point in all his imaginings had he thought that his first day at the school would be anything but a misery, so at least his first day at the Selous School for Boys was meeting, if not exceeding, his expectations.

As he made his way up the stairs, the weight of the day suddenly exhausted Emil and when he arrived at his dormitory, he collapsed on his bed and, briefly comforted by his mother’s rosewater scent on the bed linen, fell fast and deeply asleep and dreamt that the chick he had seen earlier that day had flown onto his shoulder and walked along the veld with him.

Emil awoke to hands rudely and roughly pulling him off the bed and shoving his face towards grey and grimy unpolished boots.

‘Lick my boots!’ a pompous voice instructed.

Emil was too shocked and scared to cry.

‘Lick my boots, I say!’ the pompous voice repeated and this time the words were followed by a thump in the small of Emil’s back, flattening him to the ground.

An unpolished boot pushed itself against Emil’s lips.

‘What? Too high and mighty to lick my boots, are you?’

There was another thump on Emil’s back.

Emil knew that this torture would only end when he licked the boot. So he closed his eyes, stuck out his tongue and licked the boot.

‘You’re a bootlicker,’ the pompous voice said triumphantly.

There were guffaws and snickers.

Emil, expecting that the worst was over, chose to lie there with his eyes tightly shut until they were all gone.

But, of course, the worst was not over.

‘What are you?’ another voice asked, clearly second in command.

Someone grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. ‘Not only a bootlicker, but you also still smell of your mother’s milk.’

‘What are you?’ the pompous voice asked.

It would have been the easiest thing for Emil to say the words ‘I am a bootlicker,’ but something within him railed against the idea. He knew, deep within himself, that he would never say those words and that gave him the courage to do what he did next. He collected a gob of saliva in his mouth and blindly spat it out, not caring much where it landed as long as it made contact with someone’s skin.

Everything happened quickly after that. There were several hands all over his body stripping his clothes off, leaving him only in his underdrawers, carrying him away from the dormitory ward, down the stairs, out the door, and throwing him onto the ground. Emil was certain that the worst was yet to come and prepared himself for it, but all he heard was the sound of feet moving away … and then a sniffle. The sniffle did not belong to him and so he opened his eyes to see who it belonged to.

He was surprised to find that night had fallen. He had slept through supper and no one had bothered to wake him up. This was the best school in the country?

Emil heard the sniffle again and squinted through the darkness until he made out a figure: a boy, standing about a metre away from him. He was about to speak to the figure when another sound got his attention. Several voices carrying lights were travelling towards him and the figure of the boy.

Soon the voices manifested in the form of several men, European and African, carrying on their shoulders a magnificent beast, and holding in their hands lamps that looked like luminous, nocturnal flying creatures. The arrival of these men was the most marvellous sight that Emil had ever witnessed; it was the stuff of legend. These men seemed to have been born of the night itself. Speaking in low voices, some began to make a fire while others began to skin and disembowel the animal. The lamps made the pooling crimson blood glisten in the dark. The figure a metre away from Emil made a gagging sound and then coughed.

The men instinctively and immediately stopped what they were doing and listened to the darkness. One man, carrying a hurricane lamp above his head, broke away from the hunters and made his way towards Emil and the figure beside him.

Even though he did not know what would happen next, Emil was grateful when he was illuminated by the light of the hurricane lamp. He basked in its glow and almost forgot that he was near naked.

The man carrying the lamp peered down at him, his expression difficult to read because of the shadow falling over his face. The man’s eyes travelled to the figure standing a metre from Emil. Emil turned to observe the figure as well. The silhouette was of a slightly plump boy who was about Emil’s age and who looked every bit like a cherub that had lost its wings. Emil was not surprised that the boy had been targeted with a face like that.

‘Ah! You must be the Two Unfortunates,’ the man carrying the hurricane lamp said. ‘Every year they pick the two boys that they deem to be the weakest and ostracise them. It is all very predictably Darwinian.’ The man blinked at the two boys. ‘You are not weak, are you, boys?’ Emil felt himself shake his head, not because he believed that he was not weak, but because he felt that the man standing before him truly believed that he was not weak and Emil did not want to disabuse him of this notion.

‘We are supposed to be creating men, but sometimes, I could swear, we are creating little horrors,’ the man continued, more to himself than to Emil and the cherub beside him. ‘So, Unfortunates, what are your names?’

The two boys eyeballed each other, both willing the other to give his name first.

The man smiled briefly. ‘I am Archibald Bertrand Fortesque the third. Unfortunate, I know. Luckily, you can call me Master Archie.’

‘Courteney Smythe-Sinclair,’ the cherub next to Emil volunteered.

‘Your misfortune is almost as severe as mine,’ Master Archie said, shaking Courteney’s hand.

When he introduced himself simply as ‘Emil Coetzee’, while shaking Master Archie’s hand, Emil deeply regretted that his parents had never thought to give him a middle name.

‘Not so difficult that, now was it?’ Master Archie said before adding, ‘Gentlemen, I am honoured to make your acquaintance.’

There was a genuine sincerity in Master Archie’s voice that made Emil smile, a smile that was long and lasting.

‘Would you like to help us skin him?’ Master Archie asked, inclining his head towards the campfire.

To finally be part of the hunt! Emil eagerly nodded. He glanced over at Courteney, who, even with the warm glow of the hurricane lamp on him, still looked green in the face. Feeling sorry for him, Emil walked up to Courteney, stood next to him and stared at him until they both sort of nodded at each other. Courteney looked at Master Archie with new-found courage and nodded his head but not as enthusiastically as Emil had.

There. Just like that. Emil had made a friend, as easy as you please.

By the campfire an African man was cutting the animal’s heart into pieces. Emil watched, absolutely enthralled, while Courteney ran to a nearby bush and retched. The man speared through the pieces of the animal’s heart with his assegai and offered each man there a piece. Each man accepted the piece and popped it into his mouth. Master Archie did likewise when a piece was proffered to him.

Emil had not been expecting to receive the piece of the heart that he now held in his hands and so was surprised by the warmth of it … the texture of it … the weight of it. He found that he loved the reality of the thing that, until that moment, had existed for him mostly as metaphor.

‘You have to eat it while it is still warm,’ Master Archie said.

Emil focused on the piece of the heart in his hand and was suddenly overcome with sorrow that its beauty was so ephemeral.

Mistaking the reason for Emil’s hesitation, Master Archie said, ‘Quite naturally, you do not have to eat it if you do not want to. No one is expecting you to. It is not every man that can eat the heart of an animal.’

Emil carefully put the still-warm substance in his mouth and slowly chewed it. It tasted like … the heart of something. It was neither delicious nor dreadful. He chewed for quite some time as he broke it down. Once he had swallowed the masticated heart, Emil looked at Master Archie and smiled a bloody smile.

The other men laughed and some patted Emil on the back until he felt like he had passed some secret test.

For his part, Master Archie studied Emil but did not laugh or pat him on the back. Instead, he said to him, ‘To kill something is a very serious business, never to be taken lightly because life itself is so precious. We eat the heart while it is still warm so that the animal does not die in vain. We metabolise it so that it continues to live within us. You are now carrying that animal within you and shall continue to do so for the rest of your days.’