A Dry White Season Read online

  An odd detail: not very seemly, I’m afraid, but it was as much part of Phil Bruwer as his stained teeth or his filthy shoes or his dry chuckle. I’m referring to his farting. He seemed to function in such a way that every change of thought, every new direction, every particular emphasis had to be punctuated by a fart. Improper as it may be, he is as much a virtuoso as any player of the trombone. It went something like this:

  “The Government is handling the electorate as if it were a bloody donkey. Carrot in front and kick in the backside. The carrot is Apartheid, Dogma, the Great Abstraction. The kick is, quite simply, fear. Black Peril, Red Peril, whatever name youwant to give it.” A resounding fart. “Fear can be a wonderful ally. I remember once, years ago, on a trip to the Okavango, collecting plants; whole train of bearers following me. After the first week or so they became lazy, falling farther and farther behind. One thing I can’t stand is dawdling when you’re in the bush. Then a lion started following us. It was a dry year and most game had gone off, but this old male remained behind. Got our smell. Not that it could have been very difficult, for after a few weeks in the bush one stinks to high heaven. Anyway, the couple of days that lion followed us I had no trouble with people falling behind or dropping out. Those bearers were actually jogging to keep up. Jolly useful lion that.” Fart.

  When there was nothing more left to do in the garden we went inside, to the kitchen. Just as disordered as the study. There were two stoves, one electric, the other an ancient, lugubrious black coal stove. He saw me looking at it.

  “It’s Melanie who talked me into buying the white monster,” he said. “Says it’s more efficient. But I kept the old one for my own cooking. Not every day, but when the spirit moves me.” Fart. “Like some tea?” Without waiting for an answer he took a blue enamel kettle from the coal stove and poured us some bush-tea in old-fashioned, chipped Delft cups without saucers, then added a teaspoonful of honey to each cup. “Honey is God’s own sweetener. The only true elixir of life. Only one man died young after eating honey and that was Samson. But it was his own damned fault. Cherchez la femme.” Fart. “Poor soul might have become a good, saintly man if it hadn’t been for that little Philistine tart.” We sat at the kitchen table with its red checkered oilcloth, sipping the sweet, fragrant tea. “Not that I have any aspirations towards sanctity,” he went on, chuckling. “Too old for that I’m afraid. I’m preparing myself for a long peaceful sleep in the earth. One of the most satisfying things I can think of, you know. To turn slowly into compost, to become humus, to fatten worms and nourish plants, keeping the whole cycle of life going. It’s the only form of eternity I can hope for.” Fart. “Back to Pluto and his pomegranates.”

  “You must be a very happy man.”

  “And why shouldn’t I? I’ve had a bit of everything in my life,from heaven to hell. And now I still have Melanie, which is more than an old sinner like me should hope for.” Fart. “I’ve lived long enough to make peace with myself. Not with the world, mind you.” His dry chuckle, like before. “Never too down and out to give the world a run for its money. But with myself I’ve made peace all right. To thine own self bla bla, even though it was an old turd like Polonius who said it. Even in turds God plants his humble truths.” And then, with only the barest punctuation of a change in direction, he started talking about Melanie. “Pure accident that she ever saw the light of day,” he said. “I suppose I was so mad with Hitler after the war, what with spending three years in one of his camps, that I deliberately fell in love with the first Jewish girl I saw. Lovely girl, mind you. But it was chewing off a bit much, trying to save the whole world by marrying her. Bad mistake. Never aspire to save the world. Your own soul and one or two others are more than enough. So there I was left with Melanie after my wife had gone off. You see, the poor woman was so out of her depth among the Afrikaners, what could she do but run away? And to think I actually blamed her for leaving me with a year-old baby. One tends to underestimate the strange ways in which God shows us his mercy.” Once again he couldn’t resist emphasising his point with a neat, dry fart.

  His story explained the quaintly Semitic, Shulamithic nature of her looks; her black hair and eyes.

  “She told me she met you at the court inquest on this Ngubene’s death?” he said as if, having covered the whole field, he was now directing his assault in a more specific way. Except, of course, it wasn’t an assault.

  “Yes. If it hadn’t been for her—”

  He chuckled appreciatively, pushing one muddy hand through his wild white mane. “Look at me. Every single grey hair on this head of mine has been caused by her. And I wouldn’t have missed one of them. You also have a daughter?”

  “Two.”

  “Hm.” His penetrating, amused eyes were searching me. “You don’t show too much wear and tear.”

  “It doesn’t always show on the outside,” I said playfully.

  “So what’s the next move?” he asked, so suddenly it took me a moment to realise that he had returned to the inquest.

  I told him about what had happened so far. Dr Herzog. Emily’s notes. The mysterious Johnson Seroke who’d delivered them to her. Stanley’s lawyer friend. It was such a relief, after the bickering at home, to talk freely and frankly.

  “Not an easy road you’ve chosen,” he commented.

  “I have no choice.”

  “Of course you have a choice, damn it. One always has a choice. Don’t fool yourself. Only be thankful you made the choice you did. Not an original thought, I admit. Camus. But one can do worse than listening to him. All I want to say is: keep your eyes open. I remember—” Another fart coming, I thought; and he didn’t disappoint me either. Fortunately he was lighting a match at the same time to coax new life into his dead pipe. “I remember a walking trip in the Tsitsikama forest a few years ago. Hit the coast at the mouth of the Storms River and crossed over the rickety suspension bridge. It was a wild day, awful wind, quite terrifying if you’re not used to it. There was a middle-aged couple ahead of me, nice respectable people from the holiday camp. The husband was walking in front, his wife on his heels. And I literally mean right on his heels. In mortal terror. Holding her two hands on either side of her eyes, like the blinkers of a horse, to shut out the swaying bridge and the stormy water. There they were walking through one of the most incredibly beautiful landscapes in the whole damn world and all she saw of it was a few square inches of her husband’s back. That’s why I’m saying: Keep your eyes open. Make sure you stay on the bridge, right. But for God’s sake don’t miss the view.”

  Suddenly, somewhere in the unpredictable course of his verbal diarrhoea, while we were drinking our second or third cup of bush-tea, she was there with us. I’d never heard her coming, not a sound. When I looked up she was simply standing there. Small, delicate, like a halfgrown girl with the merest swelling of breasts under her T-shirt, her black hair tied back with a ribbon. No make-up, except perhaps a touch of something at the eyes. A hint of tenseness, tiredness in her face. On her forehead, beside her eyes, round her mouth. Like the first time there was the unnerving discovery of a person who’d seenmore of life than might have been good for her. Still, it hadn’t dulled her eyes. Or are my norms really very old-fashioned?

  “Hello, Dad.” She kissed him, and tried in vain to straighten his unruly hair. “Hello, Ben. You been here long?”

  “We’ve had more than enough to talk about,” Prof Bruwer said. “Like some bush-tea?”

  “I’ll make me something more civilised.” While she was boiling water for coffee she looked at me over her shoulder: “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

  “How could you have known that I’d be here?”

  “It’s not all that unexpected.” She took a mug from the cupboard. “You’ve had a very busy week, it seems.”

  Was it really only a week since I’d been with her the first time, that late afternoon and evening among the cats in the front room, she curled up, barefoot, in the big chair?

  “How do you k
now about my ‘busy’ week?” I asked, surprised.

  “Saw Stanley yesterday.” She brought her cup to the table and sat down with us. “Ben, why didn’t you phone me after they’d searched your house? It must have been a terrible experience for you.”

  “One learns to survive.” I had meant to say it lightly, but as I spoke it sounded different; I was conscious of a sense of liberation.

  “I’m glad. I really am.”

  The small slurping sound as she tested the hot coffee. A delicate fringe of foam on her lips.

  The old man stayed with us for some time, joining in our conversation but without dominating it as before, as if the need for it had been suspended. Then he put on his black beret and went out without ceremony. Much later – he must have gone round the house, for we didn’t see him again – we heard the piano playing in the front room. It sounded slightly flat; it had probably not been tuned in years; but the playing was effortless, compelling, flowing. Bach, I think. One of those pieces that go on and on, like the old man’s conversation, with intricate variations, yet clear and precise in its complexity. She and I remained at the kitchen table.

  “Stanley told me you’d decided to keep working on Gordon’s case.”

  “I must.”

  “I’m glad. I thought you would.”

  “Will you help me?”

  She smiled. “I told you I would, didn’t I?” For a moment she scrutinised me as if to make sure I was serious. “I’ve already started working on some of my contacts. In fact, I was hoping to have something for you when you came. But they’re terribly tight-lipped. One will have to be very circumspect.” She shook back her hair. “But I think I’m on to something. That’s why I was so late today. Dad thought I’d gone to the office, but I was in Soweto.”

  “But it’s dangerous, Melanie!”

  “Oh I know my way. And I’m sure they know my little Mini by sight.” A brief, wry smile: “Although I must admit there was a rather tense moment today.”

  Her very nonchalance made my heart contract. “What happened?”

  “Well, on my way back, in the open veld between Jabulani and Jabavu, I had a flat tyre.”

  “And then?”

  “I changed the wheel, what else? But there was a crowd of youngsters playing soccer. And all of a sudden, when I looked up again, they were surrounding the car. Some were laughing, but others were raising clenched fists and shouting freedom slogans and insults. I must admit that for once I thought I’d had my chips.”

  Unable to make a sound I stared at her.

  She gave a carefree smile. “Don’t worry. I just followed their example and raised my clenched fist and shouted: ‘Amandla!’ And then it was like the Israelites crossing the Red Sea: they made way for me and I went through without getting my feet wet.”

  “It might easily have turned out differently!”

  “What else could I do? You know, I sat there behind the wheel thinking: Thank God I’m a woman, not a man. They would kill a man. Now I suppose rape is about the worst that can happen to me.

  “It’s terrible enough!”

  “I think I know what I’m talking about, Ben,” she saidquietly, looking at me with those large black eyes. “You know, after that encounter with the Frelimo soldiers in Maputo, I started getting nightmares. It went on for months.” For a moment she crossed her arms over her small breasts as if to shield herself against the memory. “Then I realised it was getting out of hand and I forced myself to think it through. All right, it is a terrible thing to happen to anyone. Not so much the pain-not even the forced entry into your body as such – but the breaking into your privacy, into what belongs exclusively to yourself. And yet, even that can be endured. Come to think of it: did it really happen to me, or only to my body? One needn’t always place one’s whole self at stake, you know. It’s like prisoners in jail; I’ve spoken to so many of them. Some never get over it. Others manage to shrug it off, because they’ve never really been prisoners, only their bodies were locked up. No one has touched their thoughts, their minds. Not even torture could reach so far.”

  “But what about you, Melanie?”

  “It’s only when you fully appreciate your body that you can also accept its insignificance.”

  “You’re your father’s child all right!” I had to admit.

  She looked round, and went to the kitchen dresser where she’d left her keys and her small handbag, and lit a cigarette. Coming back to me she moved the used cups aside and sat down on a corner of the table, so close I could have touched her.

  More, I think, to protect me against her unsettling closeness than anything else, I said: “Shall I help you wash up the cups?”

  “That can wait.”

  “I suppose I’m still conditioned by my mother,” I said awkwardly. “She never gave us a moment’s peace until everything in the house had been cleaned and put back where it belonged. Before going to bed at night she would go through the house to make sure everything was tidy, just in case she died in her sleep and left anything undone. It drove my father up the wall.”

  “Is that why you have this urge to clear up Gordon’s case too?” she teased.

  “Maybe.” For a moment I felt lighthearted: “Not that I have any intention of dying in my sleep.”

  “I hope not. I’ve hardly got to know you.” It was a pleasantry, no more, I know. Or wasn’t it?

  In any case her reference to Gordon brought me back to the question I’d wanted to ask her earlier:

  “What did you go to Soweto for, Melanie? What is it you’re working on?”

  With the characteristic gesture she swept back her long hair over her shoulders. “It may be a dead-end, of course. Still, I think it may lead to something. It’s one of the black warders at John Vorster Square. He helped me a couple of times in the past and they don’t suspect him. He knows something about Gordon. Only, it’ll demand a lot of patience, he’s very nervous. He wants to be sure that the dust has settled first.”

  “How do you know he has something on Gordon?”

  “He gave me one bit of information. He said there definitely had been bars in front of Stolz’s windows on the day of the so-called scuffle.”

  For a moment I was at sea. “What about it?”

  “Don’t you remember? They claimed Gordon had tried to jump out, that was why they’d had to restrain him. But if the window had been barred he couldn’t possibly have tried to escape.”

  “It doesn’t add much to the facts.”

  “I know. But it’s a beginning. Do you remember how Advocate De Villiers managed to confuse them when he asked them about the bars? They concocted a silly story of how the bars had had to be removed temporarily and so on. This new bit of evidence is another small wedge in the log. It casts suspicion on the whole scuffle.”

  “You think your black warder will really be prepared to help us?”

  “I’m sure he knows enough.”

  A sudden feeling of excitement, an almost boyish elation that persists as I’m writing. I know we’re making progress. There was the bit Julius Nqakula told us. The new affidavits he’s trying to find. Emily’s notes and the Johnson Seroke she’s been in touch with. And now the news from the warder. It’s precious little. It comes to us in small bits, very very slowly. But we aremaking progress. And one day it will all be exposed to us and to the world. Everything about Gordon and Jonathan. Then we’ll know it has been worthwhile all along. I’m as confident of this now as I was when I spoke to her, even in spite of her calm and reasonable attempts to keep everything into perspective:

  “Don’t get excited too soon, Ben,” she said. “Remember, this is a game played by two sides.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re not going to sit back and allow us to just gather whatever information we choose.”

  “What can they do about it?”

  “Ben, there’s nothing they cannot do.”

  In spite of myself, a numbness in my stomach.

  She went on:
“Remember, you’re an Afrikaner, you’re one of them. In their eyes that’s just about the worst kind of treason imaginable.”

  “What about you?”

  “My mother was a foreigner, don’t forget. I’m working for an English newspaper. They’ve written me off long ago. They simply don’t expect the same sort of loyalty from me that they demand from you.”

  Inside, the piano had stopped playing. The silence was almost eerie.

  Ruefully, grudgingly, I said: “Are you really trying to put me off? You of all people?”

  “No, Ben. I only want to make quite sure you have no illusions about anything.”

  “Are you so sure of what lies ahead, of the consequences of every single thing you do?”

  “Of course not.” Her lovely laugh. “It’s like the river I landed in when I was in Zaire. You’ve got to believe you’ll reach the other side. I’m not even sure it matters who or what you have faith in. It’s the experience in itself that’s important.” The frank revelation of her eyes: “I’ll help you, Ben.”