A Dry White Season Read online

  A

  DRY WHITE

  SEASON

  ANDRÉ BRINK

  Dedication

  For

  ALTA

  who sustained me in the dry season

  Contents

  Dedication

  FOREWORD

  ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  TWO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  THREE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  FOUR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  FOREWORD

  I used to think of him as an ordinary, good-natured, harmless, unremarkable man. The sort of person university friends, bumping into each other after many years, might try to recall, saying: “Ben Du Toit?” Followed by a quizzical pause and a half-hearted: “Oh, of course. Nice chap. What happened to him?” Never dreaming that this could happen to him.

  Perhaps that is why I have to write about him after all. I used to be confident enough that, years ago at least, I’d known him reasonably well. So it was unsettling suddenly to discover he was a total stranger. Or does that sound melodramatic? It isn’t easy to rid oneself of the habits of half a lifetime devoted to writing romantic fiction. “Tender loving tales of rape and murder.” But I’m serious. His death challenged everything I’d always thought or felt about him.

  It was reported in a humdrum enough fashion – page four, third column of the evening paper. Johannesburg teacher killed in accident, knocked down by hit-and-run driver. Mr Ben Du Toit (53), at about 11 o’clock last night, on his way to post a letter, etc. Survived by his wife Susan, two daughters and a young son.

  Barely enough for a shrug or a shake of the head. But by that time his papers had already been dumped on me. Followed by this morning’s letter, a week after the funeral. And here I’m stuck with the litter of another man’s life spread over my desk. The diaries, the notes, the disconnected scribblings, the old accounts paid and unpaid, the photographs, everything indiscriminately lumped together and posted to me. In our student days he constantly provided me with material for my magazine stories in much the same way, picking up tenper cent commission on every one I got published. He always had a nose for such things, even though he himself never bothered to try his hand at writing. Lack of interest? Or, as Susan suggested that evening, lack of ambition? Or had we all missed the point?

  Looking at it from his position I find it even more inexplicable. Why should he have picked on me to write his story? Unless it really is an indication of the extent of his despair. Surely it is not enough to say that we’d been room-mates at university: I had other friends much closer to me than he had ever been; and as for him, one often got the impression that he never felt any real need for intimate relationships. Very much his own man. Once we’d graduated it was several years before we met again. He took up teaching; I went into broadcasting before joining the magazine in Cape Town. From time to time we exchanged letters, but rarely. Once I spent a fortnight with him and Susan in Johannesburg. But after I’d moved up here myself to become fiction editor of the woman’s journal, we began to see less and less of one another. There was no conscious estrangement: we simply didn’t have anything to share or to discuss any longer. Until that day, that is, barely two weeks before his death, when he telephoned me at my office, quite out of the blue, and announced that he had to “talk” to me.

  Now although I’ve come to accept this as an occupational hazard I still find it difficult to contain my resentment at being singled out by people who want to pour out their life stories on me simply because I happen to be a writer of popular novels. Young rugger buggers suddenly becoming tearful after a couple of beers and hugging you confidentially: “Jesus, man, it’s time you wrote something about a bloke like me.” Middle-aged matrons smudging you with their pale pink passions or sorrows, convinced that you will understand whatever their husbands don’t. Girls cornering you at parties, disarming you with their peculiar mixture of shamelessness and vulnerability; followed, much later, as panties are hitched up or a zip drawn shut, by the casual inevitable question: “I suppose you’re going to put me in a book now?” Am I using them – or are they using me? It isn’t me they’re interested in, only my “name", at which they clutch in the hope of a small claim on eternity. But one grows weary of it; in the end you can hardly face it any more. And that is what defines the bleakness of my middle-aged writing career. It is part of a vast apathy which has been paralysing me for months. I’ve known dry patches in the past, and I have always been able to write myself out of them again. But nothing comparable to this arid present landscape. There are more than enough stories at hand I could write; it is not from a lack of ideas that I had to disappoint the Ladies’ Club of the Month. But after twenty novels in this vein something inside me has given up. I’m past fifty. I am no longer immortal. I have no wish to be mourned by a few thousand housewives and typists, rest my chauvinist soul. But what else? You cannot teach an old hack new tricks.

  Was this one of the reasons why I succumbed to Ben and the disorderly documentation of his life? Because he caught me in a vulnerable moment?

  The moment he telephoned I knew something was wrong. For it was a Friday morning and he was supposed to be at school.

  “Can you meet me in town?” he asked impatiently, before I could recover from the surprise of his call. “It’s rather urgent. I’m phoning from the station.”

  “You on your way somewhere?”

  “No, not at all.” As irritably as before. “Can you spare me the time?”

  “Of course. But why don’t you come to my office?”

  “It’s difficult. I can’t explain right now. Will you meet me at Bakker’s bookshop in an hour?”

  “If you insist. But—”

  “See you then.”

  “Good-bye, Ben.” But he’d already put down the receiver.

  For a while I remained confused. Annoyed, too, at the prospect of driving in to the city centre from the journal’s premises in Auckland Park. Parking on Fridays. Still, I felt intrigued, after the long time we hadn’t seen each other; and since the journal had gone to press two days before there wasn’t all that much to do in the office.

  He was waiting in front of the bookshop when I arrived. At first I hardly recognised him, he’d grown so old and thin. Not that he’d ever been anything but lean, but on that morning he looked like a proper scarecrow, especially in that flapping grey overcoat which appeared several sizes too big.

  “Ben! My goodness—!”

  “I’m glad you could come.”

  “Aren’t you working today?”

  “No.”

  “But the school vac is over, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. What does it matter? Let’s go, shall we?”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.” He glanced round. His face was pale and narrow. Leaning forward against the dry cold breeze he took my arm and started walking.

  “You running away from the police?” I asked lightly.

  His reaction amazed me: “For God’s sake, man, this is no time for joking!” Adding, testily, “If you’d rather not talk to me, why don’t you say so?”

  I
stopped. “What’s come over you, Ben?”

  “Don’t stand there.” Without waiting for me he strode on and only when he was stopped by the traffic lights on the corner I did catch up with him again.

  “Why don’t we go to a café for a cup of coffee?” I suggested.

  “No. No, I’d rather not.” Once again he glanced over his shoulder – impatient? scared? – and started crossing the street before the lights had returned to green.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Nowhere. Just round the block. I want you to listen. You’ve got to help me.”

  “But what’s the matter, Ben?”

  “No use burdening you with it. All I want to know is whether I may send you some stuff” to keep for me.”

  “Stolen goods?” I said playfully.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! There’s nothing illegal about it, you needn’t be scared. It’s just that I – “ He hurried on in silence for a short distance, then glanced round again. “I don’t want them to find the stuff on me.”

  “Who are ‘they'?”

  He stopped, as agitated as before. “Look, I’d like to tell you everything that’s happened these last months. But I really have no time. Will you help me?”

  “What is it you want me to store for you?”

  “Papers and stuff. I’ve written it all down. Some bits rather hurriedly and I suppose confused. But it’s all there. You may read it, of course. If you promise you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “But—”

  “Come on.” With another anxious glance over his shoulder he set off again. “I’ve got to be sure that someone will look after it. That someone knows about it. It’s possible nothing will happen. Then I’ll come round one day to collect it again. But if something does happen to me – “ He jerked his shoulders as if to prevent his coat from slipping off. “I leave it to your discretion.” For the first time he laughed, if one could call that harsh brief sound a laugh. “Remember, when we were at varsity, I always brought you plots for your stories. And you always spoke about the great novel you were going to write one day, right? Now I want to dump all my stuff on you. You may even turn it into a bloody novel if you choose. As long as it doesn’t end here. You understand?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t understand you at all. You want me to write your biography?”

  “I want you to keep my notes and journals. And to use them if necessary.”

  “How will I know if it’s necessary or not?”

  “You’ll know, don’t worry.” A pale smile twitched his tense mouth. He stopped once more, an unnatural glare in his grey eyes. “They’ve taken everything from me. Nearly everything. Not much left. But they won’t get that. You hear me? If they get that there would have been no sense in it at all.”

  We drifted along with the crowd.

  “That’s what they’re aiming for,” he proceeded after a while. “They want to wipe out every sign of me, as if I’d never been here. And I won’t let them.”

  “What have you done, Ben?”

  “Nothing. I assure you. Nothing at all. But I can’t go on for very much longer and I think they know it too. All I’m asking of you is to keep my papers.”

  “But if the whole thing is really all that innocent—”

  “Are you also turning against me now?”

  There was something paranoic in his attitude, as if he’d lost his grasp on the world, as if we weren’t really in that street in that city at that moment, as if he weren’t really aware of my presence at all. As if, in fact, he himself were a stranger whose slight and superficial resemblance to the Ben du Toit I’d once known was pure coincidence.

  “Of course I’ll keep your stuff for you,” I said, the way one would comfort or humour a child. “Why don’t you bring it round to my house tonight, then we can have a quiet chat over a glass of wine?”

  He looked even more perturbed than before. “No, no, I can’t do that. I’ll make sure it gets to you. I don’t want to cause you any problems.”

  “All right then.” I sighed with resignation. All the sob stories I’d seen in my time. “I’ll look through it and let you know.”

  “I don’t want you to let me know. Just keep the stuff like I told you. And if something happens—”

  “Nothing will happen, Ben,” I insisted, not without some irritation. “It’s just hypertension. All you need is a good holiday.”

  Two weeks later he was dead.

  By then I had already received the bulky parcel postmarked in Pretoria. And after our meeting that morning I was curious to find out more about the whole baffling affair. At the same time I couldn’t repress a feeling of resentment, almost of nausea. Not only at the impossible mess of the papers I’d received, but at the embarrassment of having to work through them. It was bad enough to get mixed up with the life stories of total strangers, but at least one remained objective, uninvolved, a more or less indifferent spectator. With an acquaintance it was different. Too private, too bewildering. I was expecting to have to tell him, as to so many others: “Sorry, old chap, but I really can’t find a worthwhile story in this.” Only, with him it would be so much more difficult. And even more so in view of the state of his nerves. Still, he’d assured me he wasn’t expecting anything beyond keeping them safely.

  That night I stayed at home, trying to sort out the mess on my carpet. The black notebooks, the school exercise books, the bits and pieces of card or paper torn from magazines, the typewritten pages, letters, newspaper cuttings. Aimlessly I started skimming and dipping into odd passages. Some names recurred regularly and a couple of them appeared vaguely familiar –Jonathan Ngubene, Gordon Ngubene – but it was only after I’d looked through the cuttings that my memories were clarified. Even then I couldn’t make out what Ben’s connection with them had been. Actually, it put me off. My novels deal with love and adventure, preferably in Old Cape settings or in distant romantic surroundings; politics isn’t my “line". And if Ben had chosen to get involved in that way I didn’t want to be drawn into it as well.

  Glumly stowing away the piles of papers in the dilapidated box they had arrived in, I noticed a couple of photographs that had fallen from a large brown envelope I hadn’t examined yet. One was quite small, passport size. A girl. Long black hair tied up with a ribbon, large dark eyes, small nose, rather generous mouth. Not beautiful in the sense of the heroines ambling through my books. But there was something about her which struck me. The way she looked right into the camera. A fierce, unsettling, uncompromising stare, challenging one to a duel of the eyes. It was an intensity belied by the gentleness, the femininity of the small oval face: Look at me if you wish, you won’t find anything I haven’t discovered for myself and come to terms with. I’ve probed my depths: you ‘re free to try too if you want to. Provided you do not expect it to give you any claim on me. – It was something along these lines I found in the photograph, used as I was to constructing “characters". At the same time the face seemed disturbingly familiar. Had I come across it in a different context I might have recognised it more readily, but how was I to expect her among Ben’s papers? It wasn’t until the following day, working through the cuttings and notes again, that I recognised the same face on some of the newspaper photographs. Of course: Melanie Bruwer. The recent rumpus in the press.

  The second photograph was an eight-by-ten on glossy paper. At first I took it for one of the pornographic pictures so readily available abroad; and it didn’t interest me much. If that was Ben’s way of getting a brief private kick it was none of my business and harmless enough. Not a very clear shot, as if the light had been bad. A background of fuzzy out-of-focus wallpaper, a bedside table, a crumpled bed; a man and a girl naked in a position of intimate caressing, apparently preparing for coitus. I was on the point of restoring it to the brown envelope when something prompted me to take a closer look.

  The girl, the dark-haired girl, recognisable in spite of the heavy grain, was the same Melanie Bruwer. The man with her was middle-age
d. The man was Ben.

  The Ben I’d known at university was different. Reserved without being secretive; rather quiet, at peace with the world and himself; and, yes, innocent. Not that he was a prude or that he scorned student pranks, but never a ringleader. I never saw him drunk; at the same time he didn’t try to avoid “the boys". A hard worker, above all, perhaps because he had to see his way through university on grants and loans and couldn’t afford to disappoint his parents. Once, I remember, I saw him with a history book at an intervarsity rugby match. During the game he joined in the singing and merriment; but in the interval he quietly went on studying, oblivious of the noise around him. Even in a room filled with talking or carousing students he could carry on working steadily when there was something he’d set his mind on finishing. Not much of a sportsman, but in tennis he sometimes surprised one with his speed and agility. Whenever teams had to be chosen, he would lose convincingly. One got the impression that he did so deliberately to avoid official matches, because in friendly games he often beat the regular team players; and on the few occasions when, as a reserve member, he was forced to step in for someone else, he amazed the lot of us. On these occasions, with something really important at stake for his team, he returned the most incredible shots. But when the time came to pick new teams for the following year, Ben du Toit would cheerfully lose hands down.

  His main diversion, a characteristically private one, was chess. It would be too much to call him a brilliant player, but he was stolid and meticulous and more often than not wore his opponents down by the sheer doggedness of his slowly unfolding strategies. In the more public area of student affairs he was seldom noticed, except for a certain unexpected flair which he sometimes revealed at mass meetings. Not that he liked these public appearances – and he consistently refused to stand for the Student Representative Council – but when he did get up to say something there was such an air of conviction and sincerity about him that everybody paid attention. And in his senior years many students, including girls, used to come to him with their personal problems. I still remember thinking enviously: Jesus, pal, you don’t know your own strength with these chicks. The rest of us, experts at impressing the ladies with swaggering savoir-faire, don’t stand a chance against that slow apologetic smile of yours-yet you don’t seem to realise it yourself. Instead of making a grab you sit there like a clumsy young dog, allowing all the bright chances to slip past. In fact, you don’t even acknowledge them as “chances"!