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one any luck.
432
3
FTER BREAKFAST LOUIS AND I took Ma s small van to go to
town. I allowed him to drive not an unambiguous
Aconfirmation on my part of all being well between us:
basically I just didn t like to handle the jalopy. At the store I asked
him to stop, and he sat waiting behind the wheel while I went in
to Mrs. Lawrence.
I ve come for a coffin, I told her. We re on our way to collect
the body.
Ag, it s such a business, isn t it? she said with a small sigh. There
was a transparent drop suspended from the tip of her nose. I ll get
a few boys to help you. In short, hurried steps she went to the back
door to shout at a few helpers loitering against the wall in the sun.
The coffins were stored with other unmanageable, bulky items in an
outbuilding.
I hope Louis wasn t upset by the conversation yesterday, she
said apologetically when she returned to her high stool behind the
counter. It must have been a terrible thing to land in a war like that.
He s only a kid really.
He does seem to overreact from time to time, I said.
And your mother was so upset too. About the rest of us selling
our farms and stuff. But surely she understands
It s all right, Mrs. Lawrence. We re also going to sell.
A NDRÉ B RI NK
What? She gaped at me, the pink plastic of her dentures
exposed. You don t say?
Yes, that s why I came down for the weekend.
Well, I never. I wonder what Mr. Lawrence will say when he
hears that.
Outside there was a clanging from the van where the coffin was
being loaded on the back.
Well, Mrs. Lawrence, it s time to say goodbye.
Ag ja, bless you, she said, taking a crumpled tissue from the
sleeve of her sweater to blow her nose in sudden agitation. Do keep
in touch, Martin. Isn t it sad the way time just flies? Seems like
yesterday when you were children.
I lingered for a moment, once again conscious of all the smells
in the store, and of the dusky depths behind the shelves. Perhaps,
when they cleared up the place one of these days, they would discover,
among all the junk, a dusty and decayed little pair of girl s panties and
wonder what on earth.
Louis blew the horn impatiently.
Why did you stay so long ? he asked when I got in beside him.
Just said goodbye. I don t suppose we ll ever see them again. I
laughed self-consciously and tried my best to sound comradely: You
know, in that little store your Dad had his first real clinch with a girl.
He glanced at me as if I d said something improper; his eyes
quizzical, uncomprehending. And I realized that even though the
two of us might fleetingly recognize and acknowledge one another
over a great distance, it didn t mean that we could either understand
or forgive. For the rest of the dusty road we didn t speak. The bare
drought-stricken veld swept past in a pastel blur. The naked knuckles
of mountains, parched trees, bleak patches of red earth, aloes.
At the police station, from a cell in the yard at the back of the
red brick building, two Black constables brought us the body, not even
covered with a blanket, shockingly naked, with the long black cuts
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R UMORS OF R AI N
of the postmortem sewn up in rough stitches. Without ceremony
they dumped it into the bare pinewood coffin; one of them went
back for a screwdriver to fasten the lid.
The redheaded sergeant we d met the day before came down
the steps of the charge office to my side of the van.
When would you like us to bring Mandisi? he asked.
For a moment I didn t understand.
For the funeral, he explained.
About eleven, I said. We d like to get it over as soon as pos-
sible. I ve got to be back in Johannesburg tonight.
Hell, but you re in a hurry, hey? said the sergeant.
My work is waiting. I only came down for the weekend. On
business.
Well, see you later then.
On the way to the farm Louis drove more slowly, and from time
to time I noticed him glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure
the coffin was all right. Whenever we came to eroded patches or
humps in the road he braked and drove with great care as if concerned
about the comfort of the woman in the box on the back.
Dad s body had been brought out to the farm in the hearse, cov-
ered in flowers and wreaths. It was raining too. There was something
outrageously morbid about the funeral in the rain. All those black
umbrellas, the red muddy water at the bottom of the grave, the mud
squelching under the artificial grass around the hole.
Something about Dad s death had remained unresolved, incom-
plete. The transitions had been too sudden. The long road back from
Tzaneen. The night with Bea. And then the news, and the frantic
arrangements, and the flight; Ma, the morgue, the funeral.
Bea had been waiting in my apartment when I returned late that
Wednesday afternoon. She had her own key.
We d spent very few nights in her own small flat in Berea: when-
ever we d gone there it had usually been for a stolen hour or so in the
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afternoon, when the well-worn old building behind the jacarandas
would be deserted. A friendly, cozy, messy little flat, lived-in and topsy-
turvy and warm. Rather dark, as a result of the trees in front of the
window; the kitchen small and uncomfortable and the bathroom
pervaded by an old, sour smell; a leaking ball valve in the toilet. And
yet a place in which one could relax completely. Unframed lithos and
paintings by anonymous or unfamiliar artists on the walls, dried veld
flowers and grass seeds in round clay pots on the floor, crammed
bookshelves made of boards and bricks; sometimes coffee mugs or
plates left on the carpet from a previous day; cushions; a couple of
cozy armchairs. In the bedroom, scattered clothes on the three-quar-
ter bed with its brass knobs (some missing) and patchwork quilt, on
the two straight chairs and the Victorian chest of drawers, or draped
over the wide-open doors of the wardrobe; a small medieval Spanish
statue of the Madonna on the dressing table, now used for hanging
scarves or bead necklaces; piles of books everywhere, some open and
facedown. The whole place was pervaded with her. No wonder, for
she d lived there for so many years ever since she d started her
LL.B. (after a double B.A. in modern languages). Even when she d
gone overseas she hadn t given up the flat but sublet it to a friend. It
had been the longest she d ever lived in one place in her life, she used
to say. Her only image of constancy and security. It had to be judged
against the background of her earlier years: Italy, and the States, and
then Cape Town, and one temporary address after the other in
Johannesburg. Now, at last, this flat was hers. And it would be diffi-
cult to understand Bea without it.
(Why do I so regularly get bogged down in these descriptions,
these details? To define what I m trying to say? To convince myself
that I haven t lost touch with it? Or simply to try and put off what I
know I must inevitably come to?)
But my own apartment was safer and more anonymous, better
suited to the nature of our relationship. It was where everything had
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R UMORS OF R AI N
started on the night of Aunt Rienie s party. And that Wednesday
night, too, we spent there.
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