A Dry White Season Read online

  “There are so many things that go by the name of ‘conscience',” said the Rev Bester quietly. “That, too, may be a matter of pride. It may be a way of taking God’s work from His hands and trying to do it ourselves.”

  “Perhaps the very reason it’s misused so often makes it such a precious thing, Dominee. No outsider can ever understand. I know nothing about your conscience, and you don’t know about mine. I’ve often wondered whether that isn’t the true meaning of faith. To know, to know in the face of God, that you have no choice but to do what you are doing. And to take the responsibility for it.” Through the smoke, more dense than before, he peered at the young man in silence; at last he said, the pipe trembling in his hand: “I’m prepared. Whether I’m right or wrong I don’t know. But I’m prepared.”

  4

  5 May. Would I have had the nerve to do it if Phil Bruwer hadn’t been rushed back to hospital? But what’s the use of wondering?

  The matron phoned yesterday. Apparently he’d heard from the Department of the Interior that his passport would not be renewed for him to visit Melanie in London. And just after lunch he’d had another attack. Not a very bad one, but he was kept in intensive care and they wouldn’t allow me to see him. “Relatives only.”

  Talked to Johan. But his eagerness to “help” is an embarrassment. What does he really understand? What can I really discuss with him? How can I explain to him this oppressive feeling in me, threatening to overwhelm me? I can no longer eat or sleep. Cornered. Claustrophobic. A bumblebee in a bottle.

  Tried to contact Stanley, although I knew it was unwise. Not from home, of course, not even from the public booth a few streets away, but from a different suburb altogether. Paranoic! No reply. Tried three more times in the course of the evening. At last came through to a woman who said he was out “on business". She promised to tell him the lanie had phoned. Still nothing by this morning. By eleven o’clock I couldn’t bear it any more. Just to hear a human voice. Even the Dominee’s! But only his wife was at the vicarage. Child-woman, blond and dazed – from having too many children too soon? – but with a certain anaemic charm. Offered me tea. I accepted in pure desperation. Trampled by toddlers. Then fled again.

  Considered driving to Pretoria to Suzette. But reluctant. Her sympathy and filial concern is my only consolation at the moment; yet I feel uncomfortable in her presence. Unable to cope with the change in her, however much I welcome it. Have given up trying to fathom her, or anyone else. Weary.

  And so I went to Soweto.

  The ultimate madness? I couldn’t care a damn. I just had to. Hoping I’d find Stanley there. Anyone I knew. Ridiculous, I suppose, but it seemed to me more likely to find someone there than here in my own neighbourhood.

  Drove in circles first, stopping from time to time to make sure I wasn’t followed. There is a certain satisfaction in these cops-and-robbers games. Tests one’s ingenuity, keeps you awake, helps you concentrate, helps you survive. To endure. Not to go mad.

  Slowed down when I reached the power-station. I’d only been there twice before with Stanley, once in the dark. And it’s a veritable maze of paths and tracks. Managed to stay roughly on course. Across the railway-line and in among the houses. But then I lost my way. Drove this way and that, losing all sense of direction in the dense cloud of smoke that obscured the sun. Stopped twice to ask the way. The first time a group of playing children froze in their tracks when they saw me, staring dumbly past me, refusing to reply. Then found a barber in front of an open door, his client seated on a bentwood chair in the dusty street, a soiled sheet draped over his shoulders. He explained to me how I should set about it.

  There were a few youngsters on the street corner when I stopped in front of Stanley’s house. They pretended not to hear when I asked them whether he was at home. Perhaps that should have warned me, but I could think of nothing but getting to him.

  Knocked. All was silent. Knocked again. At last a woman opened. Young, attractive, Afro hairstyle. Stared at me suspiciously for a moment and tried to close the door, but I held it open.

  “I’ve come to see Stanley.”

  “He is not here.”

  “I’m Ben Du Toit. He often came to my place.”

  She stared hard at me, still resentful, but as if the name had rung a bell.

  “I phoned several times yesterday. Left a message for him to get in touch with me.”

  “He is not here,” she repeated sullenly.

  I looked round helplessly. The youngsters were still standing on the corner, hands thrust into their pockets, staring.

  “You must go now,” she said. “There will be trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “For you. For Stanley. For all of us.”

  “Are you his wife?”

  Ignoring the question she said : “They are looking for him.”

  “Who?”

  “They.”

  “Does he know it?” I asked anxiously. Not Stanley too. He is the only one that remains. He has got to survive.

  “He has gone away,” she said bluntly. “I think to Swaziland. He will not come back soon. He knows they are waiting for him.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “And his children? Do you need anything?”

  She seemed to find the question amusing, smiling broadly. “We need nothing. He has made provision for us.” Then, serious once more: “You must go now. You cannot come in. They will find out.”

  I turned away, hesitated, and looked back: “But – if he comes back-will you tell him?”

  A brief motion of her head, but whether it was a nod or a refusal I couldn’t make out. She closed the door.

  Lost and dejected, I remained outside. What now? Where could I go? Back home, as if nothing had happened? And what then?

  I was so deeply lost in my own perplexing thoughts that I never saw them coming closer. By the time I looked up they were standing in a tight group between me and the car. In the background I could see others approaching casually. The very slowness of their movement made me suspicious. As if there were no need for them to hurry: as if they were very sure about the outcome.

  I gave a few steps towards the car, then stopped, uncertain. They were still staring at me in stony silence, their young dark faces expressionless.

  “Stanley isn’t home,” I said, feeling foolish, trying to establish some sort of random contact. My throat was dry.

  They didn’t move. From behind, the others were drawing closer. How on earth had they learned about my presence?

  “I’m Stanley’s friend,” I said again.

  No answer.

  Trying not to reveal my apprehension I gave another step, taking out my car keys.

  Everything started happening very quickly, in a great confusion of movement and sound. Someone slammed the bunch of keys from my hand. As I stooped to pick them up I was knocked down from behind, sprawling in the dust, but holding on to the keys. A wave of bodies tumbling over me. I tried to scuttle away on all fours, but as I was pushing myself up against the car I was grabbed again. A kick in the stomach. I doubled forward. Knee in the kidneys. For a moment I was dizzy with pain. But I knew if I stayed there it would be the end. I still can’t explain how I did it, but in the confusion of the fight I managed to make my way round the car to open the driver’s door. Thank God the others were locked. As I sank into my seat the door was wrenched open again. I kicked blindly. Caught someone’s hand in the door. Noticing a big dark crowd approaching in the distance, I turned the key with shaking hands.

  Thought of Melanie who, in just such a throng, had given the Black Power salute to be let through scot-free. But I had none of her presence of mind.

  All I did was to turn the window down an inch or so to shout at them: “Don’t you understand? I’m on your side!” My voice breaking with hysteria.

  Then the first stone hit the body of the car. Numerous hands grabbed hold of the back, rocking it, trying to lift the wheels off the ground. More stones clanging against the
sides. Only one remedy: I reversed full-speed, catching them off balance, sending them sprawling. Then forward, tyres whizzing and kicking up a cloud of dust and pebbles.

  At the first corner a few of them stood waiting for me. The window on my side was shattered by a brick that barely missed my head, landing on the empty seat beside me. For a moment I lost control of the car, zigzagging down the road, scattering children and chickens, miraculously missing them all.

  It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two but it felt never-ending. Then I was in another township. Children playing with worn-out tyres or the rims of bicycles. Women shouting at the top of their voices from one streetcorner to the next. Broken cars littering bare stretches of veld. Rubbish dumpswith clusters of people scratching and digging. Only this time there was nothing commonplace or peaceful about it. Everything was hostile, alien, ominous. I had no idea of where to turn to; at the same time I was still too scared to stop. I simply went on driving and driving, reckless and without direction, nearly breaking the axles in potholes and ditches in the road, often missing pedestrians by inches, leaving them behind in a cloud of dust, swearing and jumping and shaking their fists at me. Up and down the streets, from one township to the other.

  After a long time I forced myself to stop in a burnt-down patch of open veld. Just sat there to try and calm down again, breathing deeply. My limbs bruised. My head aching. My clothes torn and covered with dust. My hands grazed. My whole body shivering with cold fever. I waited until I felt more or less in control of myself before I finally started the car again and drove on to a shopping centre where I could ask my way. By that time, it turned out, I was at the very opposite end of Soweto, near the cemetery. Where Gordon lay buried.

  Only then did it really strike me: the strange way in which one tended to live in circles, passing again and again the same decaying landmarks from earlier times. One circle had now been completed. In this place, Stanley’s Sofasonke City, in a demonstration similar to the one I’d just been involved in, Jonathan had been arrested. For me, that had been the beginning of everything. And suddenly there was something very orderly about it all: it seemed predestined that I had to return to that place on that day.

  Back home I took a bath and changed my clothes. Swallowed a few tablets. Lay down. But I couldn’t sleep. Every now and then I started shivering again, quite uncontrollably.

  I had never been so close to death before.

  For a long time, as I lay there trying to clear my mind, I couldn’t think coherently at all, conscious only of a terrible, blind bitterness. Why had they singled me out? Didn’t they understand? Had everything I’d gone through on their behalf been utterly in vain? Did it really count for nothing? What had happened to logic, meaning, sense?

  But I feel much calmer now. It helps to discipline oneself like this, writing it down to see it set out on paper, to try and weigh it and find some significance in it.

  Prof Bruwer: There are only two kinds of madness one should guard against, Ben. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.

  I wanted to help. Right. I meant it very sincerely. But I wanted to do it on my terms. And I am white, they are black. I thought it was still possible to reach beyond our whiteness and blackness. I thought that to reach out and touch hands across the gulf would be sufficient in itself. But I grasped so little, really: as if good intentions from my side could solve it all. It was presumptuous of me. In an ordinary world, in a natural one, I might have succeeded. But not in this deranged, divided age. I can do all I can for Gordon or the scores of others who have come to me; I can imagine myself in their shoes, I can project myself into their suffering. But I cannot, ever, live their lives for them. So what else could come of it but failure?

  Whether I like it or not, whether I feel like cursing my own condition or not – and that would only serve to confirm my impotence – I am white. This is the small, final, terrifying truth of my broken world. I am white. And because I’m white I am born into a state of privilege. Even if I fight the system that has reduced us to this I remain white, and favoured by the very circumstances I abhor. Even if I’m hated, and ostracised, and persecuted, and in the end destroyed, nothing can make me black. And so those who are cannot but remain suspicious of me. In their eyes my very efforts to identify myself with Gordon, with all the Gordons, would be obscene. Every gesture I make, every act I commit in my efforts to help them makes it more difficult for them to define their real needs and discover for themselves their integrity and affirm their own dignity. How else could we hope to arrive beyond predator and prey, helper and helped, white and black, and find redemption?

  On the other hand: what can I do but what I have done? I cannot choose not to intervene: that would be a denial and a mockery not only of everything I believe in, but of the hope that compassion may survive among men. By not acting as I did I would deny the very possibility of that gulf to be bridged.

  If I act, I cannot but lose. But if I do not act, it is a different kind of defeat, equally decisive and maybe worse. Because then I will not even have a conscience left.

  The end seems ineluctable: failure, defeat, loss. The only choice I have left is whether I am prepared to salvage a little honour, a little decency, a little humanity-or nothing. It seems as if a sacrifice is impossible to avoid, whatever way one looks at it. But at least one has the choice between a wholly futile sacrifice and one that might, in the long run, open up a possibility, however negligible or dubious, of something better, less sordid and more noble, for our children. My own, and Gordon’s, and Stanley’s.

  They live on. We, the fathers, have lost.

  How dare I presume to say: He is my friend, or even, more cautiously, I think I know him? At the very most we are like two strangers meeting in the white wintry veld and sitting down together for a while to smoke a pipe before proceeding on their separate ways. No more.

  Alone. Alone to the very end. I. Stanley. Melanie. Every one of us. But to have been granted the grace of meeting and touching so fleetingly: is that not the most awesome and wonderful thing one can hope for in this world?

  How strange, this rare stillness. Even this winter landscape, bared of humanity and with the vultures circling over it, is beautiful in its own way. We still have much to learn about the subtleties of God’s infinite grace.

  In the beginning there is turmoil. Then it subsides, leaving a silence: but it is a silence of confusion and incomprehension, not true stillness but an inability to hear properly, a turbulent silence. And it is only when one ventures much more deeply into suffering, it seems to me, that one may learn to accept it as indispensable for the attainment of a truly serene silence. I have not reached it yet. But I think I am very close now. And that hope sustains me.

  5

  Surely, if Ben had not been quite so exhausted, so close to the limits of his endurance, he would have suspected something. And if he’d known in time he might have taken some precautionary measures. But there is no point in speculation. After all, she was his own child, and how could one expect him to look for ulterior motives in the disarming sympathy she so unexpectedly offered him?

  On the Sunday he and Johan drove to Pretoria to have dinner with Suzette and her family. Not that he was at all eager to embark on the journey, but she had insisted so strongly on the telephone that he couldn’t refuse. Moreover, he felt an overwhelming need to be with someone he could talk to.

  The car windows had not been replaced yet and he was worried about being stopped by traffic police, but fortunately nothing happened.

  “What on earth has happened to the car?” Suzette asked, shocked, the moment she saw him. “It looks as if you’ve been to war.”

  “It was something of the sort.” He smiled wearily. “Fortunately I came out of it unscathed.”

  “What happened?”

  “Just a mob beside the road, few days ago. “He was reluctant to go into particulars.

  After the sumptuous dinner, prepared by
Suzette’s full-time cook, Ben felt more relaxed. The good food, the wine, the tasteful interior decoration straight from the pages of her own glossy magazine, the chance of playing with his grandchild before the boy was taken away by his nanny, everything added to a new and cherished feeling of ease and warmth. Suzette led him outside to recline on deck-chairs in the gentle late-autumn warmth beside the pool, where their coffee was served. Chris, in the meantime, had taken Johan to the study to show him something. Only afterwards did it occur to Ben that it might have been deliberately arranged.

  She referred to the state of the car again. “Please, Dad, you really must be careful. Think of what might have happened! One never knows these days.”

  “It’ll take more than a few stones to get rid of me,” he said lightly, unwilling to be drawn into an argument.

  “Why didn’t you have it repaired? You can’t drive around like that.”

  “Nothing wrong with the engine. Anyway, I’ll have it fixed this week. Just haven’t had the time yet.”

  “What keeps you so busy?”

  “All sorts of odds and ends.”

  She probably guessed that he was hedging for suddenly, her voice warm with sympathy, she asked: “Or is it a matter of money?”

  “Oh no, not at all.”

  “You must promise me you’ll tell me if there’s anything Chris and I could do to help.”

  “I will.” He looked at her, smiling slowly: “You know, I still think it’s incredible, the way the two of us used to be in each other’s hair all the time – and now, these last few weeks—”

  “Sometimes it takes a jolt to open one’s eyes. There’s so much I’d like to make up for, Dad.”

  She had the sun behind her. A slender, elegant, blond young woman; every hair in its place, no sign of a crease in her expensive, severely simple dress, undoubtedly from Paris or New York. The firm lines of her high cheekbones, the stubbornness of her chin. The very image of Susan, years ago.

  “Don’t you find it unbearably lonely at home, Dad? When Johan is away to school—”