Imaginings of Sand Read online

  Its brilliance lures me. At first I move slowly, then more resolutely as I come closer, relishing – like so many times when I was a child – the spectacle of the peacock’s growing concern as it tries to strut off in stiff little steps, bent on maintaining its dignity; until I am too close, and it turns and trots, its pride now drooping. Seeing me still in pursuit it spreads its wings in a series of jerking motions as if swimming against a too-strong current, and clumsily takes off to land on the wall, once whitewashed, of the family graveyard beyond the trees.

  The gate has rusted from its hinges. The single grave that lies outside the walls, at the far corner, unmarked by a headstone, distinguished only by a bush of rosemary, is unkempt. But inside the walls, among the almost black cypresses, the small square patch appears trim and weeded, the grass cut, the gravel paths raked evenly, the headstones and severe rectangles of the graves well tidied. There are several of them. My great-grandparents share one: HERMANUS JOHANNES WEPENER 1838–1919; PETRONELLA WEPENER 1839–1921 (in our family the women tend to outlive the men). To the left and right of them, a number of their brothers and sisters, with spouses where applicable. In a second row, Oupa’s: CORNELIS FREDERIK BASSON 1889–1974. Beside the granite slab covering only one-half of his double plot is a hole, dug – we have always been told – simultaneously with his, covered with sheets of corrugated iron, awaiting Ouma’s arrival. On the stone she will one day share with Oupa, her name is already engraved: KRISTINA BASSON née WEPENER 1891–. Only the final date remains to be added. The grave itself has been in readiness, like the coffin in the attic; it serves, she used to say (and the good Dr Johnson would have concurred), a useful purpose, and every Sunday we spent on the farm, for as long as I can remember, the whole family was required, just before sunset, to accompany Ouma on a solemn little pilgrimage to that waiting hole.

  On her own, apart from weekly or fortnightly daytime visits to do whatever spadework, cleaning, planting or tidying was required, she would go to the graveyard every evening after the nine o’clock news on the radio (she never succumbed to TV). The length of the visit depended on how much she had to discuss with the dead. It was the one moment of her day when she could be wholly uninterrupted, at peace with herself and the world, to carry on, in a normal tone of voice (I know; I followed her whenever I could, and shamelessly eavesdropped), a quiet chat to bring them up to date with events on this side of the grave. Seated on the headstone of whoever she was talking to, she would enquire after the welfare of the dear departed concerned, convey her regards, and communicate all the events of her day. And invariably she would be refreshed and in high spirits when she returned. That is, except for the evenings she spent at the unmarked grave outside the walls; those visits tended alternately to depress her or enervate her.

  I would hurry home ahead of her and wait for her in the kitchen to share, depending on the season, the late-night mug of cocoa or lemon syrup that was my special privilege. I was already eighteen or thereabouts – it was certainly after Anna’s wedding – when one evening she casually asked, as she dredged the remains of her cocoa from the mug with a forefinger, whether I wouldn’t prefer to accompany her to the graveyard in future instead of skulking about in the dark to peep from a distance. ‘Perhaps it is time,’ she said with a straight face, ‘you met the rest of the family.’ I felt my throat tighten, but I nodded. I waited with trepidation, hoping she might forget, or change her mind. But that was unlike Ouma. And the next evening after the news when she prepared to go out, she waited at the back door and said, ‘Kristien!’ We went through the backyard together, followed the footpath through the trees, and reached the churchyard; the walls were opalescent in the moonlight. Ouma opened the gate. I stood for a moment, then said, ‘Ouma … I think ... you should go alone.’ She said nothing. I turned and went home. It wasn’t only fear. That I could overcome. It was a belief, sensed only confusedly, that this was her territory, that even if she’d invited me I was not meant to intrude. I never followed her again. And since then I’ve often thought that that had really been the purpose of the whole exercise.

  11

  IN THE IMMEDIATE vicinity of Ouma’s empty grave her single sister and several brothers have already taken their places. My parents lie here too. LUDWIG WOLFGANG MÜLLER 1920–1988, LOUISA MÜLLER née BASSON 1921–1990. This is the first time I have seen their graves, twin-bed style, in keeping with the mores of their generation. It is unnerving to see their lives reduced to these spare facts; perhaps that is why I find it so hard to relate to them. When it happened – six years ago, four years ago; Father of a coronary without prior warning, Mother in a car accident – I was so far away it seemed unreal; and to return home, whatever ‘home’ still meant, merely to attend a funeral and parade for the benefit of others a grief that came too late, seemed, in both cases, pointless. It is only now, here, standing at the foot of their graves as once, very small and very scared of the dark, I would stand at the foot of their beds, after a nightmare, and plead to be taken in and comforted, only to be ordered back to my own room – it is only now that it begins to seem real. But even as it edges towards reality, the stern headstones with their unimaginative legends keep me at a distance. I stare and stare, urgently wishing I could feel something, perhaps even break down and cry; but I can’t. I remain unmoved. They lived, they died; they never really were part of my life, or I, I think, of theirs.

  Desperate, I try to remember something real about them, something to redeem this moment. But the memories only confirm distance, instead of bridging it. Father: the magistrate, into whose courtroom I would sometimes slip during a trial, to crouch in a back seat, trying to relate to the stranger up there on the high bench, in his ample black gown, remote and stern, dispensing justice. However strange he seemed, I was proud, immensely proud. This is my father, I wanted everyone to know, this man who can listen to all these people and then decide, just like that, what is right, what wrong. He knows. Then, one Saturday while he was playing golf a man came to the back door to ask for him, a black man in such rags and tatters one could see parts of his bare body right through them, his baggy trousers tied to his thin waist with string, the front fastened with an inadequate safety pin; but what shocked me was that his whole face was covered in dried blood. He was unsteady on his legs, but whether he was drunk or whether it was from pain I couldn’t tell, I was too young, and certainly too terrified. Mother was inside, practising arpeggios, the door closed, which meant Keep out; Anna was in the bath preparing for an evening out. So I had to deal with him. He wouldn’t go away. When I told him Father was out, he said he’d wait, he had to see him. Why? Because his baas, he said, had beaten him – ‘Look at me!’, and he began to cry, it was the first time I’d seen a man cry – and he wanted justice. Those were his words. ‘I want justice.’

  I offered him water from one of the tin mugs Mother kept under the sink for the servants, or for blacks like this one who came to the back door. He gulped it down thirstily. ‘Why don’t you go the police?’ I asked, all stupid innocence. He just shook his head and sat down on the back step. From time to time he moaned in pain. I stood there all the time, watching in horror and misery. Until Father came home. I ran to the garage to tell him about the man. He tried to shake me off. ‘This is not the time, Kristien. I have to shower first.’ And he walked right past the man into the house. It must have been almost an hour before Father emerged from their bedroom again; he was pouring his whisky when I entered and reminded him. He was ready to dismiss me, I could see; but I stood my ground. ‘If you don’t come out to see him,’ I said, ‘I’m going to bring him in here.’ ‘Don’t use that tone of voice with me,’ he warned. ‘The man is in pain,’ I said, ‘he’s been beaten, he has come to you for help.’ Making no attempt to hide his displeasure he came past me, the glass still in his hand. ‘Yes? What do you want?’ he brusquely asked at the back door. The man staggered to his feet. The front of his trousers was all wet. He began to tell his story. Even before he’d finished, Father curtl
y interrupted him: ‘Go to the police. This is their business, not mine. If it comes to court I can deal with it, but not here.’ ‘But Baas,’ said the man, ‘I already gone to the police. They just beat me some more and chase me away.’ ‘Then I’m sorry,’ said Father, ‘but I can’t interfere. It would be highly improper. Now go away. Look how you’ve messed up the place.’ And he went inside. I fled. I couldn’t look the man in the face again. I stopped at the door to the lounge. ‘I don’t understand you!’ I shouted, tears streaming down my face. ‘I don’t understand you!’ And then I ran to our bathroom – it was still steamed up with Anna’s fragrant ablutions – and vomited in the toilet.

  I still don’t understand.

  Staring at the grave, I think of other exiles – those, perhaps, who deserved the name of ‘exile’ much more than I ever did, even at the beginning when I was still in my ‘fermenting, passionate youth’ as Michael loves to call it – who have written to me over the last year or two about their experience of visiting the graves of their dead. How deeply and urgently did they react to this moment. Enough to make my guts contract in guilt. But I cannot even properly suffer guilt. All I feel is – outside; beyond. I don’t want to. How I’d love to feel the burning ache of loss, of something. Have I become wholly immune to pain? Am I really beyond the pale? Perhaps, if I could truly feel that I belonged here, it might be different. But I don’t. Throughout my childhood, Father’s career imposed on us the need to move every three or four years to another place – new house, new school, new friends, new everything – so that I soon learned, in an instinct of self-preservation, never to put down roots, never to get fond enough of any one place to think of it as ‘mine’; as a result, this farm, Ouma’s place, Sinai, The Bird Place, became the only fixed point of reference in my youth. Even so, it was only once a year – in exceptional years, twice – that we came here. And today the rapture of being here again is mixed with the shock of seeing the palace half-demolished. And I look on it as alien territory.

  Which doesn’t mean that I belong where I have come from. Michael may represent the closest I’ve come to ‘belonging’ over the last eleven years, but even he feels like a surrogate; I remain at one remove. And it will need a miracle, or an act of faith (perhaps they mean the same thing?), to make me part of the – a – real world again.

  Years ago a lover told me with all the assurance that was his trade mark that there are basically two kinds of people in the world (an opening gambit that is guaranteed to get my back up: was that why he said it?), those who believe, and those who don’t. He classified me among the latter, mainly because I wouldn’t believe in him. In the strict religious sense he may have been right: when I was ten or thereabouts, Mother sent me to an athletics meeting in my tennis clothes while I’d told her everybody else would be wearing special new team outfits for which she refused to see any need; engulfed by the shame and anger of it I asked God to kill her with a single well-aimed thunderbolt, which I’d been led to believe was one of his specialities. But it didn’t materialise, and I’ve been an agnostic ever since. But in the larger sense of the word I have a hunch that the lover in question had it wrong. I am a believer. I know there is in me a small hard core of unresolved belief. My problem is that I have not yet found – or not yet recognised – an object for it.

  12

  AS I GO through the rusty gate (the peacock is still perched on the wall, pretending not to look at me, tail primly folded in), I suddenly remember Ouma Kristina’s firm belief that before leaving a graveyard one should always sit down for a while inside the wall, so that the spirits disturbed by the visit could return to their rest; otherwise, she used to say, they would follow one. Too bad. There is nothing I can do now to redeem myself.

  In the distance I notice two people watching me – an elderly woman with a bright blue kopdoek round her small head, and a young man in faded jeans and a short-sleeved shirt of indeterminate colour; both are barefoot. There is something wary in their attitude, as if they are ready to turn and run if I approach too closely.

  A short distance away from them I stop in surprise, believing for a moment that the woman is Lizzie, Ouma’s old companion; then I remember that she, too, has died. Not that, in this place, I would put it past the dead to wander about in broad daylight. This must be her daughter Trui, the one married to the handyman Jeremiah, but the resemblance is eerie. Trui has aged unbelievably since I last saw her, the dark face deeply furrowed, grizzled wisps protruding from the doek.

  ‘Trui?’ I ask.

  ‘Morning, Missus,’ she says, quizzical, suspicious.

  ‘Don’t you know me any more?’ I prod her.

  Another laden moment; then she exclaims, ‘My God, Miss Kristien! What is Miss Kristien doing here?’

  ‘You must know what happened to Ouma …?’ I go up to them and offer my hand. Trui takes it cautiously as if it might suddenly change into something else; then lets go precipitately. The young man stays out of reach, glowering.

  ‘Ai, Miss Kristien.’ She clicks her tongue. ‘It was a terrible thing. The whole place up in flames. And then after they took the Old Missus away it was almost worse, when the pollies came to make us tell them who did it. And how must we now know? It’s bad, Miss Kristien, this is very bad.’

  ‘Please don’t call me “Miss Kristien”,’ I say, helpless, like so many times before.

  ‘Yes, Miss Kristien.’

  ‘And you – ?’ I ask, turning to the young man.

  ‘But this is mos Jonnie, Miss Kristien,’ she says, pronouncing the j to sound like a y. ‘He’s my son, doesn’t Miss Kristien remember him? But he was only a little boytjie when Miss Kristien left.’ Without stopping to catch her breath she asks, ‘And is the Old Missus now dead?’

  ‘She’s very weak, but she’s still alive,’ I assure her. ‘She wants to come back here.’

  ‘Ag shame,’ she commiserates, then turns a stricken face to me, ‘But this is no place for her any more, Miss Kristien. Look at it.’

  Her son tugs at her arm. ‘Let her be, Ma,’ he says in a low, furious voice. ‘We’re not mixing with these white people any more.’

  Greatly agitated, she looks at me for help. ‘You must please forgive him, Miss Kristien. It’s this pollies business. They gave him a bad time, look at that face.’ (It is indeed swollen almost beyond recognition.) ‘But Miss Kristien mustn’t think this is how I brought him up.’

  ‘Ag shaddap, Ma!’ he grumbles.

  ‘And now the poor Old Missus –?’ she tries to bring the conversation back on track.

  ‘I’ve been inside the house, Trui. I know it looks awful, but Ouma wants to come home. If you and your family could give us a hand I’m sure we can make it habitable again. We’ll only need a few rooms.’

  ‘You stay out of their business, Ma,’ says her son.

  She pretends not to hear. ‘It’s a bad place now, after what’s happened,’ she says. ‘It’s spooky.’

  ‘It’s always been spooky. And if it will make Ouma feel better – even if it’s only to come and die in peace –’

  ‘Yes, Miss Kristien.’

  ‘Please, Trui, I told you, don’t –’

  ‘Yes, Miss Kristien.’

  At that moment a distraught Anna appears round the nearest corner of the grotesque building in the background, brandishing her pistol, Annie-get-your-gun Hollywood style.

  Trui and her son both look round, startled, when they realise there is somebody behind them; when she notices the gun, Trui cowers behind Jonnie, uttering a plaintive moan.

  ‘Put that thing away!’ I shout at Anna.

  She lowers her hand in obvious embarrassment. ‘You were gone so long,’ she says. ‘I was getting worried. And then there was a message on the radio –’

  ‘God, Miss Anna, you mustn’t give one such a fright,’ complains Trui, holding a thin hand to her bosom.

  ‘What message?’ I ask brusquely. I know by now that the bakkie is equipped with CB radio, to facilitate the farmers’ eager
games and keep the adrenaline flowing.

  ‘I can’t talk in front of them,’ she says, gesturing towards Trui and her son.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Anna,’ the woman says hurriedly, bobbing her mealie-stalk legs in a curtsey. ‘We just stopped to say hello to Miss Kristien. We’re going now.’

  Jonnie pulls her away. ‘I told you not to have nothing to do with these fokking Boere,’ he says; and as they pass Anna he clears his throat and spits a gob of phlegm at her feet.

  She flushes a deep red, but waits until they are out of earshot before she hisses, ‘The little shit!’ The hand holding the gun twitches. ‘Now you can see for yourself what things have come to. And these used to be the people Ouma trusted with her life –’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ I lash out at her.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ She seems genuinely perplexed.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake –!’ I take a deep breath. ‘Well? What was your precious message?’

  It was Casper. Of course. Calling from town, I learn, to tell her that one of the band of terrorists, or at least someone closely connected to them, had been nailed. Brazenly walked into a chemist’s to buy bandages, ointment and pain-killing tablets, just like that, obviously intended for the thug wounded in last night’s shoot-out. But the bastard didn’t get far. As it happened, one of the chemist’s assistants was married to a man in Casper’s commando, and she had the presence of mind, brave woman, to telephone her husband, and when the suspect stepped out on the pavement four or five bakkies with armed farmers converged on him, nearly crashing right into the shop and sowing pandemonium among the passers-by, and set on the luckless man with fists, boots and the butts of their guns. They would have killed him right there, but unfortunately the police arrived and took him off in their van.