Before I Forget Read online

  ‘I wish George could be here to see it. I phoned him last night and he said the weather was miserable up there.’

  ‘Don’t forget, it was miserable here too, yesterday. But I agree. Today he should have been here.’

  ‘You should see him working on a day like this. It’s as if he goes mad with light. I often think that is how Van Gogh must have felt. And whenever we talk about it he always reminds me, “But that is what photography is about, Rachel. It’s drawing with light.”’

  ‘I wish he could be here right now: to see your face in the light from the window. And your shoulders. And…’ I checked myself.

  ‘My breasts?’ You smiled and lightly cupped your hands on them, a perfectly natural gesture, as if in a painting, an Annunciation, perhaps.

  ‘You must be the perfect model.’

  You turned pensive. ‘He has taken some rather good shots.’

  ‘I’d love to see them,’ I said impetuously, forgetting for a moment what your reaction had been the previous time. But that was so long ago. Perhaps you had forgotten too.

  Spontaneously you said, ‘Actually, I’d like to show them to you.’ I was glowing, suddenly, with a curious light-headedness. It was like the day in the fig tree when Driekie kicked off her little panties down to the ground below; the night when Nicolette dropped her towel. It was like the moment Nastasya Filippovna, having burned all the money in the grate, went out into the unpredictable night with Rogozhin.

  You come back from George’s darkroom with a large buff envelope, and sit down next to me on the comfortable old couch, leaning against me. You draw a thick wad of photographs from the envelope and put them on your lap. The jeans are frayed, I can see your knees through them.

  Without the slightest hint of embarrassment, as if you are showing the snapshots of your last holiday, you pass one after the other to me in silence. They are all nudes. Some are stylized studio studies, with lighting that is sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic, a dialogue of light and shadow that moulds your body in space; others are more frank, probing, revealing more of who you are, what you may be thinking, what your body can be, can do, what it might like to be. They are disarming and breathtaking. They are beautiful. But they are not comforting, not ‘nice.’ They have nothing to hide, nothing to be coy about. There are still others, even more daring, more provocative, presenting you in contortions that go beyond light and shadow, that say things about you, and through you, which unnerve me and even shock me with their probing questions and their unavoidable, incontournable truths.

  I look at you, at an angle slightly from above, as you lean against my shoulder. I see what I have never noticed before: a small patch of grey hair at the crown. It is like a sign of winter in a summer landscape. And suddenly it exposes you to death and ending, in a way I would never have believed possible before. I look sideways at your face, but your attention is fixed on the photographs in your lap, your eyes light-filled. A blush on your cheeks? But if there is, then not of shame but of something else, an unspoken and perhaps unspeakable excitement, a flush of accomplishment, even of pride. In this moment I understand why, when George wanted to show them to me the previous time, you wouldn’t let him. But with a suddenness that disarms me, I also understand why, this time, you want me to look at them, to see you as I have never seen you before and never thought I could. And never might again.

  After a long time I arrange the photographs to square them very precisely, and put them beside me on the armrest of the couch.

  ‘You are unbelievably beautiful,’ I say, struggling to control my voice.

  ‘George is a fantastic photographer,’ you say, almost demurely.

  ‘Yes, the photographs are brilliant,’ I admit softly. ‘But I’m talking about you.’

  ‘I am not beautiful. You still don’t know me. You don’t know my shadows.’

  ‘I know enough of you.’

  I move to face you. You look at me, your eyes focused very directly on me, unflinching. I know that this cannot be avoided or denied. In this light that falls on us, and that seems to come from us, nothing can be hidden.

  I remember precisely how I imagined you as a wine the very first time I met you: fresh and bright, with an intense straw-like and green-peppery and lemon-grassy bouquet, and hints of asparagus and gooseberry, a fleeting farmyard presence, and the merest touch of tannin, a complex fruitiness that lingers on the aftertaste, beautifully balanced for aging. Yes. But I believe now there is so much more. A crispness of tropical fruit, of winter melon with its sweetness gliding into an almost almond-bitter follow-up. The taste of woman, which is beyond the taste of fruit and wine. This is what God warned Adam and Eve about, what He wished to preserve them from, knowing they would not be able to bear it.

  Between my hands I hold your face, very lightly, like a precious object that can fall and break very easily. Yes, I think. This is you. This is what is happening. This is the choice to be made. It is now, it is here. It is as it must be. I know what is possible and what is impossible.

  And I know, perhaps for the first time in my life, the meaning of the difference between them.

  I know now what to choose. And I know what I stand to forfeit. I can feel my hands trembling very lightly. Unless it is a tremor from your face.

  I lean over and very gently, almost without touching, press my mouth against your forehead. Like years ago, my hand against a face behind a moving window.

  The choice is made. I turn away, to the light that comes from the window.

  ‘Shall I make us some tea?’ you ask behind me.

  ‘I’d love some.’

  I hear you moving about in the kitchen, hear the water coming to the boil. The light in front of me makes no sound. After some time your footsteps come back. I turn to face you and take my cup from your hands. You sit down in the armchair opposite.

  ‘Why are you not having coffee?’ I ask.

  With a slow smile you say, ‘I thought I’d like to have a cup of tea with you today.’

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you drinking tea.’

  ‘There’s always a first time, isn’t there?’

  ‘Not always,’ I say, almost primly.

  Then we sit facing each other, and drink in silence.

  When it is over, you take our two cups back to the kitchen. You come back. I look up at you. I take the pile of photographs from the armrest and without looking at them again, slide them back into the large buff envelope. I close it very meticulously, almost ceremonially.

  I say, ‘Thank you.’

  You take the envelope from me. You also take my hand. You raise it to your lips and press a chaste little kiss on the knuckles.

  ‘Thank you,’ you say.

  The description of the wine, it seems to me now, did not work. You have never been a mere list of attributes. It sounds almost vulgar now. You are, I think, as unattainable as a Romanée Conti.

  The light is still there, outside, falling in through the window, serene and confident, like an accomplishment in its own right.

  ***

  On the way here to the old-age care center I bought Mam a small cup of ice cream, which she is scooping out with the little spoon, relishing every lick like a small child. Today she is not propped up in her too-big easy chair, but stretched out in her high white bed.

  ‘I wish you’d bring me this more often,’ she says, as she starts scraping out the last bits with a crooked finger. ‘But I know it’s bad for the figure.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with your figure, Mam,’ I assure her.

  ‘Perhaps not. I can still turn a few heads, don’t you think, Boetie?’

  ‘No doubt about that, Mam. You’re still in great form.’

  ‘But you mustn’t tell your father,’ she says, with a hint of anxiety. ‘He won’t like it. He always thinks he’s the only one.’ She chuckles with malicious glee, p
eering at me through the thick glasses which make her eyes look like fish swimming in an aquarium.

  ‘He’s dead, Mam.’

  ‘Is he now? He never told me.’

  ‘A good fifty years ago,’ I assure her patiently. ‘It was after I left the firm. A heart attack.’

  ‘Serves him right. Who was the woman?’

  ‘What woman?’ I feign innocence, hoping to find out more.

  ‘There was a woman involved, I seem to recall.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now.’

  ‘Trust you to cover up for him.’

  ‘I’m not trying anything of the sort. And you know the truth well enough. He died right on top of a woman. His secretary.’

  ‘Now what would he be doing there?’

  ‘Looking for gold,’ I snap, irked.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ she asks, and screws up her cornflower-blue eyes, the only youthful thing about her.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Mam,’ I say primly.

  ‘You should know. You’ve been around with so many women too, haven’t you now?’ A nasty little smirk: ‘You see? There’s nothing about you I don’t know.’

  ‘Must be something in the genes.’

  ‘I’ve never approved of women wearing jeans,’ she declares emphatically. ‘They put lewd thoughts in men’s minds.’

  ‘In women’s too, I fancy.’

  ‘I’ve never nursed a lewd thought in my life, Boetie.’

  ‘You weren’t exactly beyond reproach after Father died, Mam.’ Seeing her stubbornly purse her thin dry lips, I am tempted to provoke her further, but decide against it.

  ‘If anything happened, it was because of him. Or you. Probably both.’

  ‘That was not what people said. You even had an affair with the dominee, didn’t you? Soon after Father’s death.’

  ‘People say many things, especially if they’re jealous.’

  ‘Did they have reason to be jealous of the dominee?’

  ‘It would have been very short-sighted of them. He was such a harmless man. Wouldn’t cast a leering look at a fly. If he’s the one I’m thinking about.’

  ‘Mam, please. Let’s try to be decent.’

  ‘I was forced to be decent all my life. First my father, then Hendrik, now you. I also wanted a life, you know. Now I think I’m old enough to let go. How old am I?’

  ‘You’ll be a hundred and three, come August. In three months. We were born in the same month, you and I.’

  ‘Fancy that. So you’ll be a hundred and three too?’

  ‘The same month, Mam. Not the same year. I’ll be seventy-eight.’

  ‘Someone must have got it wrong. It wasn’t fair to a young girl like me.’

  ‘Were you and Father ever happy together?’ I ask.

  ‘How must I know?’ She sounds coy. ‘Men look at these things differently, don’t they?’

  I persist: ‘But when you got married? Right in the beginning?’

  ‘I was only a child when my father made me marry Hendrik. Seventeen or eighteen, just when I wanted to start living. Because my ma was sickly and he couldn’t handle a girl-child on his own. Remember?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mam. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘You were never there when I needed you. But he was there. Dearie me, what a terrible man. At it, all the time. “I must have a son. I must have a son.” But I was too small for him. All those miscarriages. How many were there? Must have been hundreds. At least three. And then the still-born boy. The doctor said never again, I won’t make it. But your father wouldn’t take no for an answer. And so there you were. Puny little brat, and I couldn’t even feed you.’

  ‘Lucky you found Nannie to pull me through.’

  ‘Who’s Nannie?’

  ‘I was told she was the girl who nursed me.’

  ‘Must have been one of your father’s little cupcakes.’ She chuckles.

  Is that a clue? I suddenly wonder, a sickening feeling. If Nannie had really been involved with him, the child she gave up for adoption could have been the brother I’d been looking for all my life. I want to find out more. I must. But I know it will be time wasted. And even if she did say something, how can she be trusted?

  ‘At least I survived,’ I say after a long pause.

  ‘Don’t talk too soon. You have death written all over you.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s somebody else’s death.’

  ‘Could it be your wife’s?’

  ‘Helena died many years ago, Mam.’

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘You never approved of her.’

  ‘Why should I? She never took care of you properly. No-good little twit.’

  ‘Helena was a wonderful wife and a wonderful mother.’

  ‘Then why don’t you ever speak of her?’

  ‘Because she’s dead.’

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘In 1972.’

  ‘Wasn’t that when they killed Verwoerd?’

  ‘No, Mam. It was actually his death that brought us together, six years before that.’

  ‘Very considerate of him. Always such a gentleman, your father used to say.’

  She sinks away into her hit-or-miss memories, I withdraw into mine. All those months of arguing and pleading with Helena; but she stood firm: no wedding, no sex. But I was so scared of taking the plunge. Forty-one years old, time to make a move, but how could I commit myself after seeing what marriage had brought the two of them? And then that day in September. I was in a café in Green Point, buying bread and milk, when the news came over the radio. Some of the customers dropped their purchases. A young boy took his chance, grabbed a handful of sweets from an open jar and ran for it; no one even thought of pursuing him. And outside on the streets, the silence. People standing in little groups, staring. Waiting for the apocalypse. Even after the previous attempt—what was the man’s name? Pratt—people thought of Verwoerd as immortal. But this time he was brought down in parliament by a messenger with a knife, the radio had said. I stood there on the pavement, among the others, waiting for the news to sink in. I thought back, all the way to 1948, to everything that had started there. The tightening of the steel frame around us, the laws and prohibitions, the growing hate, the growing fear. Bonnie, that morning at the van Riebeeck Festival. And the day on the office floor. Sharpeville. Daphne dancing in the night. Our journey into darkness, like a runaway train gathering speed. All of it focused on that one name: Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid. That avuncular, smiling face. That one can smile and smile and be a damned villain.

  Then, at last, it hit me. The man was dead. A mad elation grabbed hold of me. Tucking the parcel under my arm as in my rugby days, going for the line, I forgot completely about my car parked in front of the café and started running. It must have been instinct that drove me to Helena’s cozy little flat in Gardens rather than my own house: at a moment like that I could not be alone. I ran and ran. It must have been three kilometers, but I wasn’t aware of anything but the urge to get to her. There was once an intervarsity match against Ikeys when I got the ball just inside our own half. Two minutes to go to full-time, and three points behind. I never saw anything on the way. There were bodies between me and the line, but by some miracle I got past them, around them, through them. I could have passed, but never even thought of that. There were two or three Ikeys hanging on to me as I barged over. The finest moment of my rugby-playing years. I could see Father jumping madly up and down on the sideline. The only time I ever saw him lose his formidable composure in joy. He didn’t realize that I had seen him, and when he came to congratulate me afterwards, he was as collected as ever. But that didn’t matter. I knew. On this day of the murder it was the same thing. I drew back my ears and sprinted through the streets. Helena’s building. Two flights of stairs up. Her door. It wasn’t locked.
I just threw it open and burst inside, panting, dropping my parcel on the floor. The milk bottle broke.

  ‘Chris, what has happened? What’s the matter?’

  Her white, scared face against mine, her arms trying to hold me.

  ‘Helena, Helena, my darling…!’ I could barely speak. ‘Verwoerd… It’s Verwoerd… Somebody stabbed him, he is dead…!’ My weight pulled her down and we both landed on the floor, in the pool of milk, among the shards of broken glass. It was a miracle that neither of us was cut.

  ‘Please calm down and tell me,’ she begged.

  ‘I told you, they killed him.’ And suddenly the words burst from me: ‘I’m going to marry you. Let’s do it. Now.’

  For once, there was nothing she could do to stop me. I myself didn’t know what was happening. But it happened. Then she was the one who was crying, but whether it was from joy or shock I couldn’t tell. Only much later did it dawn on me exactly what I had said. Now nothing could be retracted any more. We had to get married. And we did.

  ‘Is that what you came to tell me?’ asks Mam in a bewildered little voice. ‘That Verwoerd is dead? But I knew that. It was on the radio.’

  I take a deep breath to keep my composure. ‘Nobody is dead, Mam. Except Rachel. I told you last time.’

  ‘I don’t even know her, why should that upset you?’

  ‘Because I loved her.’

  ‘You fall in love too easily. You always have.’ A twisted smile. ‘But so did I when I was young and beautiful. We just never get what we want, do we?’

  ‘Rachel was special.’

  ‘Why? Who was she?’

  ‘A friend. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I can’t keep track of all your little friends. I can’t even keep track of my own. We have outlived them all. It’s a lonely life, Boetie.’

  ‘I am here with you.’

  ‘I still have such a lot of catching up to do,’ she says. ‘Soon it will be too late.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re too young to understand.’

  For her, that clinches it. It is a line she has used so many times, infuriating me, but to no avail. I remember when I was fifteen or sixteen, I found her chuckling in a corner of the kitchen when I came home from school. I wanted to know the reason.