A Dry White Season Read online

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  “You kept the scraps for me?”

  That really made me angry. “Now pull yourself together, Stanley! Say what you’ve come to say. Otherwise go to hell.”

  His laughter changed into a broad grin. “Right,” he said. “Dead right. Put the kaffir in his place.”

  “What’s the matter with you today? I just don’t understand you.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, lanie. What the hell do you understand anyway?”

  “Did you come here to tell me something or to shout at me?”

  “What makes you think there’s anything I’d like to tell you?”

  Although I knew how ludicrous it was – Stanley must be twice my size – I grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him.

  “Are you going to talk?” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Let me go.” Stanley shoved me off, sending me staggering as he stood reeling on his own legs, planted far apart on the shaggy carpet.

  “You’re disgraceful,” I said. “Instead of keeping Emily company on a day like this you just make trouble for other people. Don’t you think she needs you?”

  Abruptly he stopped swaying, glaring at me with bloodshot eyes, breathing heavily.

  “What do you know about Emily?” he sneered.

  “Stanley. Please.” I was pleading with him now. “All I’m trying to say—”

  “Emily is dead,” said Stanley.

  The angels went on spinning, tinkling. But that was the only sound I was aware of, and the only movement, in the house.

  “What did you say?”

  “You deaf then?”

  “What is it? For God’s sake, Stanley, tell me!”

  “No. You want to celebrate. “He started singing: “Oh come, all ye faithful—” But he stopped in the middle of a line, staring at me as if he’d forgotten where he was. “Haven’t you heard about Robert?” he asked.

  “What Robert?”

  “Her son. The one who ran away after Gordon died.”

  “What about him?”

  “He got shot with two of his friends when they crossed the border from Mozambique yesterday. Carrying guns and stuff. Walked slap-bang into an army patrol.”

  “And then?” I felt alone in a great ringing void.

  “Heard the news this morning, so I had to go and tell Emily. She was very quiet. No fuss, no tears, no nothing. Then she told me to go. How was I to know? She looked all right to me. And then she—” Suddenly his voice broke.

  “What happened, Stanley? Don’t cry. Oh, my God, Stanley, please!”

  “She went to the station. Orlando station. All the way on foot. They say she must have sat there for over an hour, because it’s Christmas, there’s only a few trains. And then she jumped in front of it on the tracks. Zap, one time.”

  For a moment it seemed as if he was going to burst out laughing again; but this time it was crying. I had to dig my feet into the thick carpet to support that dead weight leaning against me and shaking with sobs.

  And I was still standing like that, my arms around him, when the two old people came from the spare room carrying their bags and followed by Susan, going through the front door to their car parked beside the house.

  Last night she said: “I asked you once before whether you knew what you were doing, what you’re letting yourself in for?”

  I said: “All I know is that it is impossible to stop now. If I can’t go on believing in what I’m doing I’ll go mad.”

  “It doesn’t seem to matter to you how many other people you drive mad in the process.”

  “Please try.” It was difficult to find words. “I know you’re upset, Susan. But try not to exaggerate.”

  “Exaggerate? After what happened today?”

  “Stanley didn’t know what he was doing. Emily is dead. Can’t you understand that?”

  She inhaled deeply, slowly, and spent a long time rubbing stuff into her cheeks. “Don’t you think enough people have died by now?” she said at last. “Won’t you ever learn?”

  I sat staring helplessly at her image in the mirror: “Are you blaming me for their deaths now?”

  “I didn’t mean that. But nothing you have done has made any difference. There’s nothing you can hope to do. When are you going to accept it?”

  “Never.”

  “What about the price you pay for it?”

  For a moment I closed my eyes painfully, wearily. “I’ve got to, Susan.”

  “I don’t think you’re all there any more,” she said in coldstaccato words. “You’ve lost all balance and perspective. You’re blind to everything else in the world.”

  I shook my head.

  “Shall I tell you why?” she went on.

  I made no attempt to answer.

  “Because all that matters to you is Ben Du Toit. For a long time now it’s had nothing to do with Gordon or with Jonathan or anybody else. You don’t want to give up, that’s all. You started fighting and now you refuse to admit defeat even though you no longer know who you’re fighting, or why.”

  “You don’t understand, Susan.”

  “I know very well I don’t understand. I damned well don’t even want to try to understand any longer. All I’m concerned with now is to make sure I won’t be dragged down with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s nothing I can do for you any more, Ben. There’s nothing I can do for our marriage. And God knows it did matter to me once. But now it’s time I looked after myself. To make sure I don’t lose the few scraps that remain after you’ve broken down my last bit of dignity today.”

  “Are you going away then?”

  “It’s immaterial whether I go or stay,” she said. “If I have to go I’ll go. For the moment I suppose I may just as well stay. But something is over between us, and I want you to know it.”

  That stark white face in the mirror. There must have been a time, years ago, when we loved one another. But I can no longer even yearn back for it, because I’ve forgotten what it used to be like.

  11

  The reopening of the schools seemed to provide a new impetus to events. A new wave of anonymous telephone calls, anothervandalistic attack on his car, the entire front wall of his home sprayed with slogans, coarse insults on his blackboard, at night the sound of footsteps going round the house. Until he, too, accepted the need for a watchdog; but within a fortnight of acquiring one it was poisoned. Susan’s state reached a new and disturbing low; her doctor called Ben for a serious discussion of her condition. And even when nothing specific was happening there was the gnawing awareness of that invisible and shapeless power pursuing him. For the first time in his life he was having trouble getting to sleep at night, lying awake for hours, staring into the dark, wondering, wondering. When would they strike next, and what form would it take this time?

  He rose exhausted in the mornings, and came home from school exhausted, went to bed exhausted, only to lie awake again. School imposed a measure of wholesome discipline on his life, but at the same time it was becoming more difficult to cope with, more unmanageable, an anxiety and an irritation, on some days almost anguish. The disapproval of his colleagues. Cloete’s silent antagonism. Carelse’s feeble jokes. And the enthusiastic loyalty of young Viviers sometimes proved even more aggravating than the disdain of the others.

  Then there was Stanley, coming and going as before. How on earth he managed to do so unseen and unfollowed was beyond Ben’s comprehension. In terms of any logic he should have been picked up or silenced months before. But Stanley, Ben had to conclude, was an artist of survival; seated behind the wheel of his taxi, the big Dodge, his etembalami, closer to him than wife or kin, he went his mysterious way without turning a hair. Christmas day was the only occasion Ben had ever seen him lose control. Never again. And surrounding the highly charged moments he burst into Ben’s life, emerging from the night and dissolving into it again, the complex riddle of his life remained his own.r />
  From time to time he went off on one of his “trips", to Botswana, or Lesotho, or Swaziland. Smuggling, most likely. (But what? Hash, money, guns, or men—?)

  In the last week of January Phil Bruwer had to go back to hospital. He hadn’t had another attack, but his condition had deteriorated so much that the doctors felt he should be keptunder constant surveillance. Melanie had to fly back from the Cape, abandoning the project she’d been working on. A few times she and Ben visited the old man together, but it was depressing as, for once, it seemed as if his indomitable spirit had given up.

  “I’ve never been afraid to die,” she told Ben. “I can accept whatever happens to myself and I’ve been close enough to death to realise it doesn’t make so much difference.” Her large black eyes turned to him: “But I’m scared for him. Scared of losing him.”

  “You’ve never been afraid of loneliness before.”

  She shook her head pensively. “It’s not that. It’s the bond as such. The idea of continuity. A sort of reassuring stability. I mean, anything outside one may change, one may change oneself, but as long as you know there’s something that goes on unchanged, like a river running down to the sea, you have a sense of security, or faith, or whatever you want to call it. Sometimes I think that is why I have such an overwhelming urge to have a child.” A deliberate, mocking laugh. “You see, one keeps clinging to one’s own little hope for eternity. Even if you’ve given up Father Christmas.”

  12 February. And now Susan. Have noticed something in her these last few days. Thought it was just a new phase in her nervous state, in spite of the sedatives she takes in ever growing doses. But this time it turned out to be different, and worse. Her contract with the SABC revoked finally. Convincing arguments about “new blood” and “tight budget” etc. But the producer she usually worked with told her the truth over a cup of tea. The fact that she was my wife was becoming an embarrassment to them. One never knew when my name might be linked to some scandal. He didn’t know where it came from. His superiors had simply told him that they had “information".

  It all came out last night. When I came into the bedroom she sat waiting for me. The day after Christmas she’d moved into the bedroom that used to be the girls', so I was wary of this unexpected new overture. She in her nightie without a gown, seated on the foot of my bed. A nervous, twitching smile.

  “You not asleep yet?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I was waiting for you.”

  “I still had some work to do.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  The trivialities, the inanities one can indulge in!

  “I thought you were going to the theatre tonight?” I said.

  “No, I cancelled it. Didn’t feel like it.”

  “It would have done you good to go out.”

  “I’m too tired.”

  “You’re always tired nowadays.”

  “Does it surprise you?”

  “It’s my fault. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  Suddenly a hint of panic in her: “I’m sorry, Ben. Please, I didn’t come here to reproach you for anything. It’s just – it can’t go on like this.”

  “It won’t. I’m sure something will happen soon. One has just got to see it through.”

  “Every time you believe ‘something will happen'. Can’t you see it’s only getting worse? Just worse and worse all the time.”

  “No.”

  Then she told me about the SABC.

  “It’s the only thing I had left to keep me going, Ben.” She began to cry, even though I could see she was trying to fight it. For a while I stood looking at her hopelessly. If a thing like this goes on so slowly, day by day, you tend not to notice the difference. But last night, I don’t know why, I suddenly looked at our wedding portrait on the wall above the dressing table. And it shook me to think it was the same woman. That beaming, self-assured, strong, healthy, blond girl and this weary old woman in the nightie made for someone much younger, the pathetic white lace leaving her arms bare, the loose folds of skin on her upper arms, the wrinkly neck, the streaks of grey no longer camouflaged in her hair, the face distorted with crying. The same woman. My wife. And my fault?

  After a while I sat down beside her, holding her so she could cry properly. Her sagging breasts. She didn’t even try to hide them: she who’d always been so ashamed of her body when it was young and beautiful. Now that she’d grown old she didn’t mind my seeing. Was it carelessness or despair?

  How is it possible that even in agony, even in revulsion, onecan be roused to desire? Or was it something I tried to avenge on her? All those years of inhibitions; the passion I had discovered in her on a few rare and unforgettable nights of our life together, only to be almost aggressively repressed afterwards. Sin, wrong, evil. Always occupied, always busy, running, achieving things, grasping at success, frantic efforts to deny the body and its real demands. And now, all of a sudden, pressed against me, exposed, exhibited, made available. Blindly I took her, and in our agonising struggle she left the imprint of her nails on my shoulders as she cried and blubbered against me; and for once it was I who turned away in shame afterwards, remaining with my back to her.

  A very long time.

  When she spoke again at last her voice was completely controlled.

  “It didn’t work, did it?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “I’m not talking about tonight. All these years.”

  I didn’t answer, reluctant to argue.

  “Perhaps we never tried hard enough. Perhaps I never understood you properly. Neither of us really understood, did we?”

  “Susan, we’ve brought up three children. We’ve always got along fine.”

  “Perhaps that’s the worst. That one can get along so well in hell.”

  “You’re exhausted, you’re not seeing it the way you should.”

  “I think for the first time in my life I’m seeing it as I should.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I looked round. She was sitting upright, the bedspread drawn defensively round her shoulders in spite of the warm night.

  “I want to go to my parents for a while. Just to regain my balance. To give you a chance. So that we can think it over calmly and clearly. It’s no use if we’re both so involved that we can’t breathe properly.”

  What could I do? I nodded. “I suppose you do need a holiday.”

  “So you agree?” She got up.

  “It was your idea.”

  “But you think I should go?”

  “Yes, to breathe some fresh air. To give us a chance, as you said.”

  She went as far as the door. I was still sitting on the bed.

  She looked round: “You’re not even trying to hold me back,” she said, the passion in her voice more naked than her misused body had been a little while ago.

  The worst was that there was nothing I could say. Realising for the first time what a total stranger she was. And if she was a stranger to me, the woman I had lived with for so many years, how could I presume ever to understand anything else?

  25 February. I’m making fewer and fewer notes. Less and less to say. But it’s a year today. It feels like yesterday, that evening I stood in the kitchen eating my sardines from the tin. A detainee in terms of the Terrorism Act, one Gordon Ngubene, has been found dead in his cell this morning. According to a spokesman of the Security Police, etcetera.

  And what have I achieved in this year? Adding everything together it still, God knows, amounts to nothing. I’m trying to persevere. I’m trying to persuade myself that we’re making progress. But how much of it is illusion? Is there anything I really know, anything I can be absolutely certain of? In weaker moments I fear that Susan might have been right: am I losing my mind?

  Am I mad-or is it the world? Where does the madness of the world begin? And if it is madness, why is it permitted? Who allows it?

  Stanley, two days ago already: Johnson Seroke shot dead b
y unknown persons. Emily’s Special Branch man, my one remaining hope. Now he too. Late at night, according to Stanley. Knock on the door. When he opened they fired five shots at point-blank range. Face, chest, stomach. Leading articles in several papers yesterday. Interviews with police officers: “All those voices that usually cry out against deaths in detention are strangely silent now that a member of the Security Police has died in the service of his country. This black man’s life, sacrificed on the altar of our national survival in theface of senseless terrorism, should be pondered by all those who never have a good word for the police and their ceaseless efforts to keep this country stable and prosperous—”

  But I know why Johnson Seroke died. It doesn’t take much imagination.

  How much longer must the list grow of those who pay the price of my efforts to clear Gordon’s name?

  Or is this yet another symptom of my madness? That I am no longer able to think anything but the worst of my adversaries? That in a monstrous way I’m simplifying the whole complicated situation by turning all those from the “other side” into criminals of whom I can believe only evil? That I turn mere suspicions into facts, in order to place them in the most horrible light? If this is true I have become their equal in every respect. A worthy opponent!

  But if I can no longer believe that right is on my side, if I can no longer believe in the imperative to go on: what will become of me?

  12

  7 March. Beginning, end, point of no return: what was it? Decisive, undoubtedly. Separate from everything else that has happened so far – or rooted in it? Have been going round for days now, unable to write about it, yet desperate to do so. Frightened by its finality? Afraid of myself? I can no longer avoid it. Otherwise I shall never be able to get past it.

  Saturday 4 March.

  The rock-bottom of loneliness. No sign of Stanley since the news about Johnson Seroke. I know he has to be more careful than ever, but still. No word from Susan. Johan off to a farmwith friends. This is no life for a young boy. (But how touching when he said: “You sure you’ll be okay, Dad? I’ll stay here if you need me.”) More than a week since I last visited Phil Bruwer in hospital. Melanie working full-time. You reach a danger point if you’re forced to keep your own company for too long. The temptation of masochism.