Rumours of Rain Read online

  It was equally difficult to report back to Reinette. (What was there to report? What did I dare tell her? How could I presume so much as to decide the course of both their lives?)

  I tried to be as evasive as I could. “Just give it a rest,” I suggested in the end. “He’s very tense at the moment.”

  “You’re hiding something from me. You’re sorry for me.”

  “It’s not that at all, Reinette.”

  I poured her another drink from the bottle I’d ordered earlier. We were in her hotel room. After dinner we’d gone for a walk, but it was cool outside and she was tired; she made no protest when I came up with her. By that time there was a strange (should I say: dangerous?) intimacy between us, as if in his absence Bernard had caused an electrical current to flow between us. Then there were those gestures, attitudes, intonations which reminded me uncannily of Elise but which, belonging to another person, had a curious intensity all their own. As if I were courting my own wife again; as if I’d miraculously cancelled ten years of my life to return to someone I’d lost, a girl in cool water on a torrid day.

  She began to cry. It came without warning, and she seemed to collapse completely on the bed where she was sitting, with a lostness about her which startled me. At the same time I couldn’t just let her cry like that. I went to sit beside her, taking her in my arms and comforting her as if she were a child like Ilse. Holding her more and more tightly, and caressing her, soothing her, I slowly became conscious of desire stirring inside me, quite uncontrollably. Rocking and swaying, clinging to me in despair, something was changing in her too. Our embrace became the agonised writhing of love, and when I entered her I felt her nails tearing into my back. It felt as if we were trying to strangle and tear apart and kill each other in the wildness of our efforts to obliterate ourselves.

  There were moments when all was confused in me, when I really thought it was Elise I had in my arms, as in those first days of our love, long before our marriage. But with the strange discovery, not of possessing her more completely than before, but in fact of doing so for the first time.

  Deep in the night, I remember, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. Reinette lay behind me, her torn and crumpled dress pulled up to her breasts, her bruised thighs wide open, exposing the grimace of her sex.

  I wanted to say: I’m sorry. But why? No one had been injured by what we’d done. We were adult, both of us; we were responsible. We’d gone into it together. And yet I was appalled by the finality and the irrevocable quality of it.

  I drew the spread up over her. She still didn’t move. For a moment I thought in panic: My God, suppose she’s dead?

  But then she opened her eyes and asked: “Are you going away?”

  “It’s very late.”

  “Of course.”

  “I promise you I’ll come back tomorrow. I —”

  She moved her head on the pillow, from side to side, her eyes closed: “No, please don’t.”

  “I mean —”

  “I know. But it won’t be necessary. I’m going home tomorrow.”

  “But Reinette, you still haven’t —”

  A small, weary smile flickered through the smudged lipstick and saliva on her mouth. “Perhaps you’ve made it easier after all. Now it really is finished.”

  I wanted to argue or protest, but her closed eyes shut me out. Putting off the light as if that would cancel her image both for me and for herself, I went out and walked down the four flights of stairs, avoiding the lifts for some inexplicable reason.

  Perhaps it really had been the best thing that could have happened, I thought in the car on my way back home. I had saved Bernard the upheaval of a new confrontation and a new painful decision; for her as well. There was no need for anyone to feel guilty. How could I be held responsible? I’d merely wanted to comfort her.

  The strangest thing of all was to see, as I came from my hot bath at home, Elise sleeping peacefully in bed. Somehow I found it inexplicable to see her so untouched and immaculate. Until, in my sleepy stupor, I realised: Of course, it’s as it should be. No one has raped my wife. Not even I.

  9

  ON THE SLOPE behind us, reflected in the rear-view mirror, lay the lights of Cathcart. The road became misty, and it grew denser as we went on. By the time we turned off the main road, a few miles from Stutterheim, I had to slow down to forty miles an hour. Occasionally the narrow dirt road rose above the mist on the slopes of the high round hills, from where one looked down on the silver clouds in the valleys and kloofs below, a magical, incredible sight. But I was no longer susceptible to irrelevant beauty. The farm was weighing heavily on my mind and my memories.

  I stopped at the farm gate on the narrow ridge of a small plateau. Louis got out, walking stiffly past the headlights, and tugged at the chain for a few moments before he could push the gate open. He was forced to lift the loose end of the gate bodily, as the little wheel on which it was supposed to run was missing. Stolen by one of the piccanins, most likely. Unless one kept an eye on them all the time one would end up with nothing.

  As Louis opened the door to get in again, I could hear dogs and voices from the huts on the slope above the house. There was a flickering of fire. Two years ago they’d burnt off all the winter grazing with their fires. We had to buy fodder for the cattle at enormous expense. One of the children had also got killed in the fire.

  The narrow farm road was in an appalling state, all potholes and loose stones. I felt a surge of anger as a large stone hit the body of the Mercedes. No matter what Ma said, the farm needed a man’s hand.

  Where the road made a sharp bend to the right, the lights shot out into the void beyond. There was a very sudden drop there, invisible from as close by as fifty yards: a rift torn into the guts of the earth, probably long before the advent of man. Presumably it had either exposed deeper, fertile layers, or else in the course of time the sides of the valley had caved in, bringing down the humus of rotten plants and opening up courses for streams. For the valley was luxuriant, perennially green, and in the daytime one could follow the fingers of virgin forest along the beds of fountains and a hidden stream; there were even fern-trees and palms, apart from a jungle of cycads and plumbago, euphorbias and brushwood and enormous wild-figs, and an incredible variety of aloes.

  Approaching the bottom gate at the beginning of the lane of flamboyants, I slowed down to stop for Louis once again, but someone had already opened it. Ma’s three large mongrels came running from the house, barking and wagging their tails, looking like young lions in the car lights. I pulled into the garage next to the shed, beside her dilapidated little van and the tractor. On one side lay a broken harrow, under a tree covered with the nests of weaver-birds; a couple of old wagon-wheels; farther away were the fowl-run and the low wall of the pig pen.

  As I turned off the lights, I saw Ma waiting beside the water tank at the kitchen door: tall and erect, tough, sinewy, her grey hair gathered tightly behind her head. Over her working clothes she was wearing a soiled white apron. The calm, practical, indomitable woman I’d known for so long, never showing her age, even now that she was past seventy. At the same time, standing there in silhouette against the light from the kitchen, she also appeared lonely, the loneliness characteristic of people who never allow one to look past an active or proud exterior. Perhaps she wasn’t even aware of it herself.

  In her arms she held a bundle, like a baby. And going towards her, I discovered that it was indeed a baby, held comfortably in her arms as she stood there waiting for me, regal and self-assured in her back door, with her apron.

  I kissed her. With one hand – the other still held the bundle – she pressed me against her with an urgency contrasting strongly with her proud bearing. Drawing back, I even caught her wiping off tears. But for her sake I pretended not to notice.

  “You’re late, sonny,” she said. (Even when I’m sixty I’ll be “sonny” to her.) “Been held up?”

  “Not really. We couldn’t get away fr
om Pretoria earlier.”

  “What were you doing in Pretoria then?”

  “Business,” I said laconically, turning back to the car to call: “Will you bring in our things, Louis?”

  “Is it only Louis with you?” asked Ma. “You didn’t say anything in your telegram, so I was wondering.” I couldn’t make out whether she was disappointed or relieved.

  “It was impossible to bring the whole family.”

  “Didn’t Elise want to come?” she asked, with a suspicion born from her possessiveness.

  “Ilse has to go to school, Ma.”

  She turned away from me to look at Louis as he approached. “Goodness me,” she said, “you’ve grown into a man since I saw you last, haven’t you?”

  He frowned, yielding for a moment so that she could kiss him before he went into the house.

  “He’s become very difficult ever since he came back from Angola,” I explained briefly, keeping my voice down.

  “His grandpa would have been proud of him. They really gave those terrorists hell, didn’t they? He helped to make history.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.” I followed her into the kitchen. “Whose baby is this you’re holding?”

  She turned back to me, opening one corner of the bundle, revealing a Black child with enormous eyes.

  “His mother brought him down this afternoon. Gastro. I’m just trying to calm him down a bit. These people, you know, they always wait for the last minute.”

  “Evening, Baas,” said a voice from the far side of the kitchen. In the dusky corner I recognised the old Black woman in a blue headscarf.

  “Evening, Kristina. How are you keeping?”

  “No, good, Baas. Thank you, Baas.”

  “Come on, hurry up,” Ma told her. “Take the food to the table. Don’t stand there like you got the lame sickness.”

  There was another woman in the kitchen, behind Kristina. All I could see of her in the dark was a gleam of eyes and a glimpse of a youthful face with high cheekbones. She cast down her eyes the moment she noticed me looking in her direction.

  Ma handed the baby to her. “Take him now, Thokozile.” She spoke in Xhosa. “If he wakes in the night, give him some medicine. You can bring him back to me in the morning.”

  She followed me through the dining-room and down the front passage to the spare room.

  “I prepared the double bed in my room in case Elise came with you,” she said. “But I think you and Louis will be all right in here.”

  The white crocheted bedspreads were drawn tightly across the two beds; brass knobs shone dully in the half-dark. The room smelled of floor polish and soap. There were white towels draped over the pitcher on the wash-stand.

  “Make yourselves at home, sonny. Dinner’s ready when you are.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Louis after she had gone out.

  “Have something anyway. You know what Grandma is like.”

  In the dining-room we stopped for a while to gape at the collection of dishes on the large table under the gas lamp.

  “You’ve come a long way, you need strength,” Ma said calmly. “Will you say grace for us, sonny?”

  Mechanically I recited Dad’s prayer. “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”

  Ma carved the leg of lamb – even when Pa had been alive she’d done the carving – and filled our plates without asking what we wanted. Sweet-potatoes, roast potatoes, rice with raisins, stewed peaches, vegetables; Heaven knows where she’d found it all in the heart of winter.

  In the kitchen the baby whined.

  “Close the middle door, Kristina!” called Ma in a loud voice, without looking up from her duties.

  The gas lamp was hissing peacefully.

  “What’s happened to the generator?” I asked. “Don’t you have electricity any more?”

  “Broke down day before yesterday,” said Ma. “And that Mandisi does things in his own good time. It’s useless to speak to him, he just looks at you with those eyes.”

  “I’ll have a look tomorrow.”

  She laughed. “What do you know about machinery? Rather let Louis have a try. He’s good with his hands.”

  “I’ll speak to Mandisi anyway.”

  “If he’ll listen to you.”

  “What can you expect, living here all on your own like this?” I said. “It just can’t work out in the long run.”

  “Don’t let’s start on that again, sonny,” she said. “Your Dad’s grave is here on the farm and that’s where I want to be buried too one day.”

  I decided not to pursue the subject any further for the moment. We ate in silence. Louis just pecked at his food.

  “You still haven’t told me what you came for,” said Ma when Kristina came in to collect the plates. “All this way for only a few days.”

  In the passage the clock struck the half-hour. It must be half-past eleven.

  “We can talk about it tomorrow, Ma. We’re much too tired now.”

  “It’s a bad thing to travel so far with that heart of yours.”

  “I’m perfectly all right.”

  “You look much too thin to me.”

  Kristina brought in the coffee pot, and three large white cups and saucers.

  “No sugar for me, thanks, Ma.”

  The night pressed down heavily on us. Through the kitchen door we could hear the child whining again. Ma got up and went out. I tried to focus on Louis’s face opposite the blinding spot of the gas lamp.

  “Tired, Louis?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Time to turn in. Tomorrow isn’t going to be an easy day.”

  “What am I going to do all the time?” he asked.

  “Oh there’s more than enough to do on the farm. Take a good long walk.”

  “Why did you bring me along?”

  “I thought the change might do you good.”

  He didn’t answer.

  After a few minutes I got up and went down the passage, through the front door to the lawn outside. The clear black rumps of the hills stood placidly all around, defined in the moonlight. Where the valley sloped down towards a dark, dense kloof running through two rows of hills, the silver mist softened the stark outlines. A night-jar shrieked. Going towards the row of tall cycads I opened my flies and watched the moonlight glistening on the thin jet of water. Louis approached from the house and stopped a few yards from me, following my example. In the dark, fleetingly but reassuringly, through that mundane little action, we became allies again.

  In the direction of the valley, past the dairy, lay the family graveyard. Stifling a ridiculous urge to go down there, I turned back with Louis. The house stood staring out at the night through blind black windows.

  “I brought you a lamp,” said Ma, waiting in our room.

  “I prefer the candle,” I said. “It’s more homely.”

  “As you wish. Good night.”

  “Night, Ma. Now please don’t lie awake worrying.”

  “I have nothing to worry about,” she replied calmly.

  Her proud grey head held high, she went down the passage to her own room, her shadow showing the way. A few minutes later our candle was out, leaving the intimate and heavy smell of wax behind in the dark. Slowly the night took possession of the house.

  I was too tired to sleep. There were too many memories taunting and troubling me. All the things conjured up by the smell of the candle. Holidays on the farm of my boyhood friend Gys; or on this same farm, visiting my grandparents with Dad and Ma and Theo. Sleeping either in this room or in the one built on to the stoep; sometimes, when the whole house was filled with uncles and aunts and cousins, I’d sleep on a mattress stuffed with dried mealie leaves, on the floor in the corner of my grandparents’ room. The comforting rustling sound it made when one stirred or turned in the exciting strangeness of the oppressive dark behind the wooden shutters closed for the night. The candle on the table beside their great canopied bed; the two bodies kneeling for praye
r on the down mattress, like two blanket-covered loaves set out beside the fire to rise.

  Bernard’s room in the outbuilding, and our interminable conversations. The Sunday night after Elise had been there. Suppose I told you I’ve decided I’m going to marry that girl? – She’s a wild one, that child. – I think I can tame her. The young lecturer who’d saved Greta and me from rustication after the weekend in the Cedar Mountains: simply because he hadn’t been able to resist the temptation of getting involved in others’ lives. Just as he’d interfered in the backyard squabble about the servant’s husband. A conversation about a suicide with a blue ring round his navel (and all the blood on the shaggy carpet). Music: Mozart, the Larghetto, Schnabel. The urgency in his voice as he spoke from the door of the apartment: Please come back soon, Martin. Give Aunt Rienie my love, enjoy yourself for a while. But then come back. I’ll wait for you.

  The lean, straight back and the blonde hair in the canoe in front of me, the slow spinning motion in the whirlpool; a small fire on the bank, the smoke drifting upwards in the clear still air. Shots fired by an angry farmer; a little café tart, a telephone on a counter with rows of bottled sweets.

  Deep in the night, a man and a woman in a half-dark room, that emblematic moment: two hands touching the same glass, a head upturned, an awareness of irrevocable loss. Images from half a lifetime. A man pursuing me like a conscience, even to this dark and distant farm where I’d hoped to be rid of him.

  Are you washing your hands? – No, I’m putting on my knuckle-dusters.

  Loss, loss, waste. All of it, one slow diminishing.

  (How long is a life sentence?)

  But in recalling all these memories I was merely postponing the inevitable, the one thing I’d prefer not to remember, but which, in that tired, defenceless hour, I could no longer resist.

  It might have been easier if he hadn’t spoken those words in court. But he had to make sure that I, too, would be forced to face it all and come to terms with it. Perhaps my arrest could have been avoided at the time it happened. But it is so easy to misjudge a situaton, or a trivial detail, or a friend.