Childish Things Read online

  ‘Not bad at all,’ I mumbled when I saw Simon giving me a side-ways glance.

  I wasn’t exactly keen to meet my brother’s new friend. He sounded like the kind of guy who acted older than his age, and such guys always made me stutter and stammer like an idiot in standard three. But they had both come home for a few days, for the first time in three months, and Simon wanted to visit Pierre that afternoon. And I had to admit that I was flattered when he asked me to drive to Black River with him.

  ‘Pierre has also seen quite a number of flicks that are banned here,’ Simon said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music.

  ‘Dirty movies?’

  ‘No, man, good ones, like Hair … Clockwork Orange … Last Tango in Paris …’

  ‘I hear it’s disgusting,’ I said before I could stop myself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Tango one,’ I said. ‘One of the guys in my class saw it in LM. He said it was too awful. There’s a scene where the man rubs butter on the girl’s bottom …’

  Simon burst out laughing.

  ‘What?’ I looked through the window on my side so that he couldn’t see me blush.

  ‘Do you know that Pa read Lady Chatterley’s Lover years ago?’ Simon shook his head, his fingers quiet on the steering wheel. ‘And all he can remember is a scene where the lovers evidently stick daisies up one another’s arseholes.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  Simon waited until the song that was playing ended before he replied. ‘Pierre says Last Tangoin Paris is a brilliant movie.’

  Pierre definitely had to be a pervert, I decided, becoming more and more uncomfortable about the meeting which lay ahead. The tarred road made a wide curve past a large blue lake and dense plantations of pine trees where sunlight threw long fingers of light through the shadows. I could easily imagine we were travelling somewhere in another country, Canada maybe, somewhere where you were allowed to listen to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in a car.

  Pierre was tall and dark but not what I would call handsome. Too thin, I thought, too serious, with hollow cheeks and black eyes set too deeply in their sockets. That was my first impression.

  His room was in the garden where he could play his music loudly without irritating his mother, he said. The walls were painted a dark blue, almost blue-black, and the curtains were drawn. You would never guess that the sun was shining outside. I sat on his bed, bored, and stared at the blue electric bulb which hung above a bookcase. If one could call such a contraption a bookcase.

  The crowded shelves looked as though they’d been cobbled together by someone who knew more about literature than carpentry. I tried to read the titles of a row of tattered paperbacks in the weak light. I recognised some of the authors’ names even if I hadn’t read them: Tolstoy and Flaubert, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald … but there were a great many names I had never heard of: Durrell and Fowles and Updike … It was impossible for anyone of Pierre’s age to have read so many books. It was simply a brag, as my Grandma Farmdam would say.

  Simon and Pierre sat on the floor next to the stereo, sipping beer and discussing the army. They had forgotten about me. And the longer I had to listen to their stupid army stories, the angrier I got. Not only with them but with myself as well. Why didn’t I simply get up and go for a walk in the garden?

  Ma said if you ever show a man that he’s boring you, he’ll never forgive you. But what would Simon and Pierre do if they had to listen to Dalena and me talking about lipstick or nail polish for an hour?

  I turned my head to look at the posters on the walls. Not the ones you’d normally expect to find in a boy’s room, of pop stars or pin-up girls with stars on their bare boobs, cut out of magazines like Scope. Above the bed there was a poster of Beethoven and next to it an unknown black man with a clenched fist, and next to that a soldier falling back as if he’d been shot, with the word Why? in big black letters.

  ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was coming from the loudspeakers but they barely heard it. PT instructors … corporal … basic training … AWOL … to the border … Swapo … I caught a word here and there but preferred to listen to Pink Floyd. What I found most irritating was that they said they hated the army. How in hell could you spend so much time talking about something you hated?

  ‘… between the MPLA and FNLA,’ Pierre said. ‘And Jonas Savimbi’s Unita, of course.’

  Now I paid attention because I had recently read an article in Huisgenoot on Angola. The black people were fighting and the white people were fleeing. It frightened me.

  ‘It sounds as if things are pretty grim,’ Simon said and swallowed some of his beer. ‘The Portuguese can’t get away fast enough. The same thing that happened in Mozambique last year.’

  It sounded as if we’d read the same article. Or maybe all South African journalists sounded the same when they wrote about the chaos prevailing in the two former Portuguese colonies bordering our country. Mozambique had been declared independent the previous year, causing a flood of white refugees to stream to South Africa. Angola would gain independence in a few months’ time, and once again thousands of refugees were fleeing to the last white outpost in Africa.

  Our government, of course, had promised to protect its citizens from the Communist threat represented by the new rulers of both these countries.

  ‘But I don’t understand it.’ Simon stared at the beer bottle in his hand. ‘I thought the blacks would throw a helluva party because the white bosses had eventually gone. Isn’t that what they wanted? Now it seems as if they want to murder one another.’

  ‘That’s politics, pal,’ Pierre said. ‘You hardly expect all of them to think alike just because they’re black?’

  ‘No, of course not, but … aren’t they tired of fighting? They’re like a bunch of kids who’ve been given a cake as a present. Instead of dividing it equally, they fight over it until there’s nothing left of the cake.’

  ‘I don’t think you should see independence as a gift.’ Pierre smiled, but only one corner of his mouth lifted. ‘Or blacks as a bunch of children.’

  ‘OK, OK, you old liberal!’ my brother laughed. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘You must remember that the whites in Africa have always followed a policy of divide and rule. Jomo Kenyatta says the whites really pray for the blacks to keep on fighting so that the whites can remain the rulers.’

  ‘You mean …’ Simon absently swallowed another mouthful of beer. ‘The whites leave but the divide and rule remains?’

  ‘Something like that. But I think our government is going to do more than pray.’ Pierre’s slightly husky voice had developed an ominous note. ‘Our guys have always been better at fighting than praying.’

  Simon frowned at him, his mouth open as though he wanted to ask something but didn’t have the courage to do so.

  ‘I think they’re going to send in the army,’ Pierre said without looking at Simon, his black eyes on his bottle of beer.

  ‘Into Angola?’ Simon’s face was a study in disbelief, his voice soaring in astonishment. ‘Never!’

  ‘Why not? The army is already on the border. They merely have to cross it. The soldiers, the weaponry, it’s all there. Do you think they’ll be able to resist the temptation?’

  ‘But …’ Simon laughed nervously. ‘How will we know which side to choose?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Pierre shrugged his shoulders and laughed with my brother. ‘Divide and rule?’

  Simon whistled softly through his teeth. He no longer looked so disbelieving. I was suddenly enormously irritated. When I sighed – far more loudly than I’d intended – Pierre looked up in surprise as though he had only just realised that there was another person in the room with them.

  ‘You’re bored with our army talk.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Well …’ I was suddenly grateful for the room’s darkness because I could feel that I was blushing again. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to go t
o the army …’

  ‘What would you like to talk about?’

  Was he making fun of me?

  ‘You can always discuss books with her,’ my brother said. ‘She reads far more than I do.’

  ‘But not nearly as much as you do,’ I hastily parried and gestured towards the crowded bookshelves.

  ‘Many of those books belong to my mother and father.’ He finished the last of his beer. ‘All those old-fashioned numbers. I prefer modern authors. And you?’

  ‘No … I don’t know … as long as the book reads well …’

  Now I sounded exactly as I’d feared I would. Like an idiot in standard three. My mind changed into a car with a flat battery. I pumped the mental accelerator up and down, as I had seen Ma doing, desperate to utter a sound. But there was nothing except a deathly silence between my ears. Pierre smiled, this time with both corners of his mouth, but the one side was still higher than the other.

  ‘Do you feel like a flick tonight?’ my brother asked, saving me from further humiliation. ‘Pierre knows the owner of the café next to the Plaza. He can let us have a special home movie.’

  ‘Special?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘Uncensored,’ Pierre said.

  ‘I don’t know …’ He couldn’t possibly mean one of the dirty movies we’d discussed in the car earlier in the afternoon. ‘What kind of flick?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Pierre said. ‘We won’t get anything that’ll make a schoolgirl blush.’

  And I blushed again.

  ‘Can I invite Dalena?’ I asked on the spur of the moment.

  ‘How will she get here?’ my brother asked.

  ‘She’ll manage.’ Even if she had to steal her father’s car and drive herself here, Dalena wouldn’t let an opportunity like this slip through her fingers. She wasn’t as cowardly as I was. ‘She can sleep over at the farm and we can take her back tomorrow.’

  ‘Who’s Dalena?’ Pierre wanted to know.

  ‘Mart’s roommate,’ Simon said. ‘Apparently she’s a sex bomb.’

  ‘I never said that!’

  ‘Well, you said she’s sexy.’

  ‘Tell her she’s welcome.’ This time Pierre’s smile was as twisted as Grandpa Fishpond’s after he’d survived his first stroke. ‘Tell her she’s very welcome.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me your brother is such a dish?’ Dalena wanted to know the moment I opened my eyes.

  She lay on her stomach on the other bed in my room, chin in hand, as though she had been waiting for hours for me to wake up.

  Immediately I closed my eyes again. The light was too bright and her voice too deep. Usually I liked Dalena’s boy’s voice but this morning I wished she were a hi-fi so I could turn down the bass. I had gone to bed too late after drinking too much beer, trying to impress Simon and Pierre. There was a constant throbbing in my head and my hair smelt of smoke.

  ‘Hey, you can’t go back to sleep,’ she whispered urgently.

  ‘Why not?’ I moaned softly with closed eyes.

  ‘I have an important subject to discuss with you.’

  I felt a pillow hitting my head. Playfully, but hard enough to make me open my eyes. I knew when I’d lost.

  ‘What is it, Dalena?’

  ‘Tell me more about your brother.’

  I threw the pillow back at her head.

  ‘He’s dangerous. He smokes and he drinks and he breaks girls’ hearts by the score. What more do you want to know?’

  ‘Sounds irresistible.’ Dalena smiled her shamelessly wide smile.

  ‘Did you like the movie?’

  ‘I can’t remember a thing about it,’ she said. ‘It was impossible to concentrate with your brother sitting so close to me.’

  ‘Good morning!’ My mother stuck her head round the bedroom door. ‘I’ve brought you coffee and rusks.’

  Ma was wearing her Japanese dressing gown, the one she called a kimono. One day she would see the East, she always said. (And Russia and Egypt.) She didn’t bring me coffee in bed as a rule but she liked to impress my friends. She didn’t wear the kimono every day, either.

  ‘Thank you, tannie, that’ll be delicious!’ Dalena said in her sweetest voice and jumped up to take the tray with its crocheted cloth, starched stiff as cardboard, from my mother.

  Ma gave a grateful smile. ‘Did you have a nice evening?’

  ‘We saw a good movie. The Graduate. Have you heard of it, Ma?’

  ‘With Dustin Hoffman?’ Ma seldom went to the movies these days but she greedily absorbed every bit of scandal about Hollywood stars in all her favourite magazines. ‘He’s so short and dull! I know I’m old-fashioned, but I still like a leading man to look like a leading man!’

  ‘Like Clark Gable or Rock Hudson,’ I mumbled, my mouth full of rusk.

  ‘Like Clark Gable or Rock Hudson,’ Ma agreed seriously.

  The moment Ma’s shiny blue kimono disappeared round the door, Dalena jumped up to sit cross-legged on my bed, almost on top of me.

  ‘Tell me honestly, Mart,’ she said urgently. ‘Tell me if you think I stand a chance.’

  ‘Of what?’

  I sucked the coffee out of a soaked rusk and put out my hand to switch on the radio on my bedside table. It was my first ever opportunity to tease my roommate. I had to admit it was a pleasant sensation.

  ‘Do you think there’s a chance, no matter how small …’

  She got no further because Niel and Lovey ran yelling into the room. Niel held his arms protectively over his head while Lovey made a frustrated grab at his hair. It was only when she tickled him under his arms and he laughingly dropped his hands that we saw he had tied one of those long, old-fashioned sanitary towels on to his head, the loops hooked around his ears. I caught Dalena’s eye and we tacitly agreed that we wouldn’t laugh at such a childish joke.

  But I had difficulty keeping a straight face. Where had he found the thing? Ma had had that operation a long time ago and Lovey …

  ‘Mart, tell Niel to grow up!’ Lovey yelled when Niel grabbed her hands.

  ‘Niel, Lovey says you must grow up!’

  Dalena gave up the struggle and started laughing. Pleased, Niel turned his head towards us and with his attention diverted for a moment, Lovey jerked the sanitary towel off his head so roughly that he seemed in danger of losing his ears. He screamed like the victim in a bad murder movie and fled, laughing.

  ‘Men!’ Breathlessly Lovey sank down on the bed opposite Dalena and me. She clutched the towel like a trophy. I still couldn’t believe that my baby sister could be the owner of this strange object. ‘If only they knew what it is to be a woman …’

  I also fell into helpless laughter.

  ‘But, Lovey, that thing is miles too big for you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, mortified. ‘But Ma says I’m too young for the kind that you push in …’

  ‘But doesn’t Ma know about the new kind that you stick on?’

  ‘Lovey!’ Simon called from somewhere in the house. Lovey and Dalena both jerked upright.

  ‘He said I could go with him to buy the Sunday papers,’ Lovey said before disappearing. ‘Ciao.’

  The sanitary towel was left lying on the bed like an ugly, stranded boat.

  ‘This morning she’s under the impression that she’s in an Italian movie,’ I said to Dalena.

  ‘Why didn’t he ask me to go with him?’ Dalena wanted to know.

  I turned up the volume on the radio and hummed ‘Sorrow’ along with David Bowie. Simon said his son’s name was Zowie, Zowie Bowie. It would be quite fun to have a name like that, Simon said, especially in the army. Sapper Zowie Bowie.

  ‘He probably didn’t even notice me!’

  ‘It’s quite difficult not to notice you, Dalena,’ I consoled her. ‘You’re not exactly a shrinking violet.’

  ‘Maybe he likes shrinking violets?’

  ‘If you really want to know, I think he likes anything that wears a skirt. Especially after three months in the army.’

&
nbsp; She fell on to her back with a sigh that sounded as if it had been fished from the depths of her stomach and folded her hands behind her head.

  ‘Listen, Dalena,’ I said, my eyes on her bare legs, ‘I don’t want to interfere …’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  ‘But I must warn you …’

  I didn’t know how to say it without sounding stupid. Do it fast, I thought, as fast as possible. ‘Don’tletmybrothermisuseyou.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her mouth trembled as she tried to control a smile.

  ‘You know very well what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t care what your brother does to me, Mart!’ The smile spread. We were back in our usual roles, Dalena the teaser, I the teased. ‘This is the first time since Miss Lourens’s brother that I’ve had this ticklish feeling in my body.’

  ‘Where in your body?’ I asked warily.

  But she just laughed. And I felt as if I had pushed a car to get it started, with great difficulty, only to be left behind while the occupants drove away.

  London

  30 September 1992

  Dear Child

  John Lennon is singing ‘Imagine’ on the radio in my narrow London house with a front door that opens on to a pavement, and a back garden smaller than a British pound note. Just imagine there’s no heaven.

  I hear that seventies music is becoming popular again. And the fashions keep popping up on the streets. Is nothing exempt from the irrational power of nostalgia?

  An election is being held in Angola today which could change everything. Perhaps there will be an end to the war that has torn the country apart for so many decades. On the other hand, perhaps nothing will change. Things might even get worse. However unthinkable that might seem.

  It’s easy if you try, John Lennon sings. I introduced my son to him today. Why, I don’t know, but it was the one figure in Madame Tussaud’s famous Wax Museum that caught his almost three-year-old attention. Maybe he became aware of his mother’s nostalgia (back to bloody nostalgia again) as we stood in front of the four young men with their dark mop-heads, narrow ties, and identical jackets tidily buttoned. Or a nostalgia emerging from the depths of the collective subconscious of an entire generation?