A Fork in the Road Read online

  In that very same gravelled yard a young policeman, Grobler, committed suicide one Wednesday afternoon by shooting himself, but slightly botched it and took quite a while to die. I don’t know why the doctor wasn’t called immediately. The body was taken to one of a row of outdoor privies where it was left to be collected; and once again it was Elise who came running to tell me about it. But all we could see from our vantage point behind the barbed-wire fence that separated the police station from our yard, was one bare bluish-white foot sticking out from the open privy door, and a wide circle of blackened blood on the gravel. I remember his dirty toenails. Remember, too, my resolve to make sure I washed my feet every evening before going to bed, just in case I died in the night.

  It was Elise’s recklessness that captivated me. When she and her best friend, the dominee’s elder daughter Maritha knew that there were visitors in the parsonage, the two girls would strip themselves naked and climb up the huge pepper tree beside the garden path that ran from the front door to the gate; there they would sit and wait until the people emerged from the parsonage, and at the crucial moment they would take careful aim and pee on the heads of the visitors.

  Not all of the memories from those days are quite so dramatic, even if they remain vivid. Like the occasion when a rickety little mule-cart came past in front of our house, with a large brown family piled on it. The driver was, presumably, the father, a small wiry man wearing an old floppy hat at a precarious angle and swearing and shouting at the top of his voice as he mercilessly flogged the solitary wretched grey mule straining to drag the impossible load along the dusty street. At a given moment the animal could not take it any more. He stopped, and tried to lie down in his harness. The father jumped off the cart. Wielding his heavy whip he started belabouring the whimpering little beast. It was unbearable. I remember the small puffs of dust that rose from the mule’s bony back with every blow. With an almost unbelievable effort the animal slowly began to move again, moaning like a human being.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ I said from the pavement, scared to shout too loudly, but unable to contain my fear and rage any longer. ‘I’ll call my father.’

  ‘Ha!’ shouted the man. With a show of glee the driver gave the mule a last series of blows, folding double under the effort, and then put his foot on the step to hoist him back on the cart. But looking over his shoulder to cast a final look of triumph at me, he missed his foothold, and fell down in a fierce cloud of dust, and the nearest wheel of the cart went right over him.

  Call my father … That was always the last resort – even though I knew he would generally refer the problem back to me, at least he would provide the perspective to understand it better. He was the magistrate. He was second only to God. He knew all about Right and Wrong, about Good and Evil. From the time I was about nine, I would often slip into the courtroom through a side door while he was hearing a case, and slide into the very back bench, to listen to the proceedings. The crimes were usually pretty nondescript. Invariably some miserable black man in threadbare clothes would be accused of petty theft, or being drunk and disorderly, or brawling and fighting, or trespassing, or being found on the streets after the evening curfew that was announced by the tolling of the church bell. More rarely a white man might be accused of having dealt too severely with one of his black labourers, or beating his wife, or failing to pay maintenance for a child born out of wedlock. I would listen transfixed, trying to sift the evidence for and against, or making sense of the interpreter’s version of what had been said. There was no court secretary or stenographer around: my father had to write everything down in his small, immaculate handwriting, with ever-widening margins on feint foolscap paper. As the last page was filled, he would tap the pile of papers into position and proceed immediately to deliver the verdict. Only in rare cases was the court adjourned for an hour, or until the next day. And every time, without fail, I would be stunned by the precision with which he summarised all the evidence and went straight for the kernel of truth hidden within so much verbiage. Years later, I once asked a friend who had become an advocate and who had occasionally pleaded in cases in my father’s court, for his opinion; and he said, ‘With old Brink on the bench, one always knew that what counted in that courtroom was the simple truth, no matter what the applicable law might say. He couldn’t care less about the legal prescriptions. But he had an unfailing instinct for what was truth, and what a lie.’

  It made me feel rather proud. With God in his heaven and my father on his bench, justice would prevail in the world.

  But then came the Saturday afternoon when the strange black man turned up in our backyard. He wasn’t wearing anything remotely resembling clothes: they were mere tatters, and he was reeling and staggering as if drunk, but he wasn’t. He was in pain. His face looked as if it had been battered completely out of shape and then put through a mincer. Blood was streaming from a gash in his head, and his eyes were almost invisible. I was practising tennis against the back wall of the house when he came through the gate. He hobbled towards the back door, flopped down on the gravel, propping his back up against the wall.

  Numb with shock I edged towards him and asked what he wanted. For a long time he just moaned and mumbled. When at last he tried to articulate through his grotesquely swollen lips all I could make out was that he wanted to speak to the baas. But my father was out, playing tennis, as was his wont on a Saturday.

  It seemed like ages before I dared to ask, ‘What happened to you? Was there an accident?’

  He shook his head and mumbled incoherently. At long last he managed to explain. His baas had beaten him. I couldn’t make out why. And I couldn’t believe that a beating could be so severe as to result in this. I wanted to talk to him, to find out more, but I was too shocked to speak. In the end I simply squatted down beside the man and sat in silence. Waiting for my father, who would no doubt know the answers and offer a solution.

  But when he came home, he went straight from the garage in his tennis clothes, barely glanced at the battered man, and walked into the house. I gazed after him, unable to understand, then got up and scurried after him.

  ‘You must come and help,’ I gasped. ‘Something terrible has happened.’

  ‘It is Saturday,’ my father said. ‘I’m tired, I’m going to have a shower.’

  ‘But that man was nearly killed,’ I said, feeling my voice break. ‘Please, Pappie.’

  ‘He can come back on Monday.’

  ‘Please!’ By now I was sobbing openly.

  ‘Well, at least give me time to shower.’

  I stood there, shaking my head. And waited outside the bathroom. Until at last he emerged. He seemed to head for the lounge, where my mother would be waiting with the tea, but I waylaid him. With a sigh of impatience he resigned himself and followed me outside.

  Once again the man mumbled his story, even less intelligibly than the first time.

  Before he could finish, my father said, ‘You must go to the police. There is nothing I can do for you. It is not my work.’

  ‘I been to the police first time,’ said the black and bleeding man. ‘They beat me some more. So now I come to you.’

  ‘They are the only ones who can help you,’ said my father. ‘I must go now.’

  In at least two of my books I have written about this episode, hoping to exorcise the memory. But it is no use. It still haunts me. I still see that head, those hands, that blood-streaked face before me. And I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the world has never been quite the same place as before. My father not quite the same man. Something shifted. The centre no longer held.

  There were other occasions too, when violence came very close to engulfing me. There is no need to wallow in this darkness. Only one more memory, not involving my father this time, but a particularly jocular and generous man whose family, old friends of my parents, offered me a room during my first few years at university. A farmer and a businessman, Oom John was one of the funniest people I had ever met. With
a heart of gold, everybody said. And even in this episode he would have been under the impression that he was acting in a particularly humane and magnanimous way.

  It concerned a young black boy of about sixteen or seventeen, whom Oom John had brought from one of his several farms in the Northern Cape to become his houseboy in my university town, Potchefstroom. In those days – and regrettably, in spite of everything that has happened in the country in recent years, things have still not changed all that much – an ancient feudal system still operated on farms, where land would be bought and sold together with the livestock, labourers included; and while the farm was yours, you could dispose of any man, or woman, or child on it in any way you wished. So when Oom John needed an extra pair of hands in town, a few hundred miles away from the farm, young Adam was brought there without considering even for a moment that it might not suit him. As it was, Adam was a rather frail boy, and very attached to his mother, who happened to be seriously ill at the time, and who died soon after the day in question.

  Within a month of being transplanted to the small outroom in the backyard of the sprawling house in Potchefstroom, Adam ran away. He was caught on the outskirts of Potchefstroom and brought back. He’d wanted to go and see his mother, he explained. He was generously let off with a warning and a few slaps around the ears. And assured that he could go to the farm for Christmas. Oom John was indeed a generous man. The problem was that it was only April then, and the boy’s mother might not last that long.

  But there are matters more serious than the life or death of a labourer’s mother on a distant farm.

  The second time Adam ran away, Oom John still treated it as a joke and didn’t beat the boy too badly. After three days he was ready for work again, his rebellious spirit seemingly subdued.

  The third time it was serious. Oom John took Adam to the police station to discuss the matter. There he was roughed up a bit just to make him understand that there were ways to behave oneself properly. The sergeant on duty suggested to Oom John that they could either take care of Adam in their own time-honoured way, or he could take the boy home and flog him himself.

  No, no, said Oom John, he didn’t want to see the boy maimed or killed; he’d prefer just to deal with it on his own. If they could assure him that he had their permission.

  They were happy to give their permission.

  ‘But don’t let the little bugger off too lightly,’ the sergeant called jokingly as Oom John prepared to leave. He, too, was a man of humorous bent.

  And so the next morning at about ten o’clock Oom John brought two of his neighbours over, and Adam was taken to the coal shed. Each of the men had a length of hosepipe in his hand. With a few lengths to spare, should the need arise. Even then Oom John demonstrated his considerate nature. To prevent the boy soiling himself or spoiling his clothes he was stripped naked. And then the door of the shed was closed behind them.

  Oom John’s wife and the ladies she had invited to tea ensured that every door and window in the house was tightly closed. Yet it could not shut out the regular sound of the blows. At eleven o’ clock I went out, preferring to continue my studies in the university library.

  When I returned just after two, the wailing sound, to the steady, unflinching accompaniment of the dull thuds, could still be heard from the back of the property. I turned on my heel and went back to the library. At five o’ clock they were still beating the boy. Even though by that time one could no longer hear him wailing.

  I went to lie on my bed and covered my head with both my pillows.

  Shortly before suppertime the men came in, streaming with sweat and exhausted, in dire need of some refreshment after their strenuous day.

  I did not sleep that night. One stupid sentence kept on careering through my head. I was lying on my bed and covered my head with two pillows. As if the whole of my life, perhaps the whole of white civilisation in South Africa, could be crammed into those few words. I knew then that Adam’s voice, and the dull smacking sound of those blows would remain an accompaniment to the rest of my life. It would never let go of me again. Not ever. The stark, simple fact of violence would never leave me. It was there, and would be there, wherever I went, whatever I did, for ever and ever, amen.

  My own acts of violence never amounted to much, although they were cruel enough. To my disgrace I must admit that I enjoyed shooting birds; but more often than not they were too quick for me. Then I started trapping them. My most successful contraption was a mesh-covered cage with a large opening shaped like a funnel, through which birds would enter, lured by crumbs inside. Most days the cage remained empty. But one day, quite unexpectedly, there were no fewer than fourteen birds trapped inside, fluttering about wildly and hurling themselves against the mesh. I waited for my father’s return to ask his advice. ‘Wring their necks,’ he said laconically. I eagerly poked my hand in through the funnel, managed to grab a bird – a very tiny little thing, with shiny green feathers and white-rimmed bright beady eyes. Suddenly it no longer seemed like so much fun. But I grasped the little head between forefinger and thumb, turned away, and started twisting. No luck. I began twisting more and more furiously, like turning a crank-handle. When after thirty or forty spins I put the bird down, it uttered a faint cheep, dizzily flopped a few steps this way and that, then remained hunched up. But its eyes were still open. I vomited.

  Back to my father.

  ‘Why don’t you just let them go?’ he said.

  ‘But it took me days to build that trap.’

  ‘Well, you caught them, so it’s up to you to deal with them.’

  I went over to the neighbours to borrow their airgun. One by one I shot the remaining thirteen birds. Soon I was sobbing. It took thirty or forty shots to kill them all, and the inside of the cage was spattered with small green feathers and blood.

  In due course, my father introduced me to the more worthy world of hunting. First he led me through target practice, at which I became quite adept. Then I graduated to the real thing. How proud I was to be taken with him when he was invited to farms to bag springbok, or – more rarely – blesbok. He had a formidable .303, I had to make do with a .22. I must have been thirteen or fourteen when I bagged my first springbok. Quite a good shot, too, on the left shoulder. He had taught me well. There is a photo of me with that first victim of my hunting prowess, which in a way reveals much of what that childhood world was about. On the surface, innocence. The casual innocence of a young, smiling boy wearing what may well have been his first long pants and bursting with pride about his achievement, standing astride his dead springbok which looks uncannily lifelike, holding it by the horns in an attitude of easy domination. But behind the charm of the scene – Look what a good boy am I! – lurks a very real and very bloody truth: something beautiful that has had to be killed to satisfy an instinct for maiming and death the boy has never even been aware of in his eagerness to be accepted into the world of his people.

  The killing itself was something of a fluke: I lacked the temperament indispensable to a successful hunter. Generally, whenever a group of buck approached, I simply pressed the butt of the gun to my shoulder and started firing blindly – quite literally, as I tended to shut my eyes. Not even the sight of a wounded animal scampering off on three legs with the shattered fourth swinging dizzily alongside, until it flopped down with a bleat of agony, could deter me: it was part of the game, part of being a man.

  It was only many years later, when I was directing a play in Windhoek, Namibia, then South-West Africa, and a group of us went camping on a game farm, that I made a deliberate choice to give up hunting. On that late afternoon we were on the back of a small pickup when someone spotted a small herd of gemsbok among a sprinkling of camel-thorns, about a hundred yards to the right. I took aim very carefully. When I pulled the trigger, I knew I’d got it. But the herd cantered off, and mine was nowhere to be seen. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. The farmer had sternly warned us not to wound anything. We gave up the search when night fell. In the m
orning some Bushman trackers found it, in a thicket not twenty yards from where I’d hit the gemsbok. A shot in the heart. Only then I learned that after such a shot the quarry would often run off at full speed for some distance before dropping in its tracks. By the time the Bushmen brought us to the dead gemsbok, the vultures and jackals had already got to him. Most of the carcass was gone, leaving the obscenely white crescents of the ribs sticking up from the red-black mess of the chest cavity. The head was relatively unharmed, except that the eyes had been torn out. The beautiful horns formed a stark heraldic V against the sky. They were offered to me as a trophy, but I did not want them. I never hunted again.

  My most significant personal involvement in violence remained largely imaginary, and that was incomparably more terrifying than anything I could have experienced physically. These images came mainly from reading, erupting in vivid dreams when I was least prepared to face them. Sometimes they were based on stories my father had told – about dying children in the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War, or about cases that had come before his court. Once, friends of my father who were visiting passed round a set of forensic photographs from a murder inquiry in which he had been involved. When I entered the room on some innocuous mission, the photos were hurriedly put away and I was not allowed to look. But after school the next day, while my father was still at work, I came across the small pile of photographs on the oval dining table. Of course I rifled through them, after making quite sure that there was no one around. I wished immediately that I had never looked. They were stark and graphic: the bodies of a man and a woman attacked on their farm and hacked to pieces with hatchets. The man’s skull was bashed in. The body of the woman, spread awkwardly across a sofa, wearing only one shoe and with her head on the floor, was covered in huge gashes and black with blood. Before that day I had always assumed that one day I would follow in my father’s footsteps and become a magistrate. Or possibly a lawyer. But after gazing at those photographs I knew that I would have to think of something entirely different.