The Smell of Apples: A Novel Read online

  With the help of the Kalk Bay Coloureds, Oupa and Dad built the big house right at the very top of St James Street. Building carried on for six months, and Dad was allowed to stay home from school to help Oupa with everything, right until the last bit of painting. When everything was finished, they moved in and our newspaper, Die Burger, took a photograph of the grand house of the Afrikaners from German East Africa. A framed cutting of the photograph, with Oupa, Ouma and Dad on the veranda, hangs in Dad's study. The article with the photograph says that although Dad is only eleven years old, he speaks English and Swahili almost as well as he speaks Afrikaans.

  When Dad started going to school at Van Riebeeck, Oupa volunteered to join the navy in Simonstown. They thought the war in Europe would bring lots of ships to the Cape and Oupa wanted to help the war effort in any way he could. It was at that time that Doreen started working in the house for Ouma. At first Ouma asked Oupa whether she couldn't send for her two Wachaggas from Dar es Salaam, because she wasn't used to having a female servant

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  in the house. She wanted male servants, like she'd had in Tanganyika. There she'd had two Wachaggas for housekeeping and another three for the garden. But eventually she had to accept having Doreen, because the Cape Coloureds just laughed at the idea of men doing housework. When Ouma started the garden, she got Chrisjan to help with the lawns and the planting.

  When Doreen first started working here, she still lived in Newlands and came straight to work every morning by train. But after Oupa died, when we moved into the house with Ouma, she was already living in Grassy Park, where the government built nice houses for all the Coloureds. In the mornings she first catches a taxi to somewhere like Retreat, and from there she gets the train to St James station, right down the hill from us.

  When I was four, Oupa Erasmus's fishing-boat capsized in a storm over False Bay, and Oupa drowned. His body never washed up on shore. I was still too small to remember, but Use says it was the most terrible of terrible times for Dad. And also for Oupa's younger brother Uncle Samuel.

  Dad and Uncle Samuel combed the coastline for days, searching for the body. Two days after the storm, some fishermen found the wreck of Oupa's boat washed up near Smitswinkel Bay. But there was still no sign of Oupa or his crew. All they found was a piece of cloth on Muizenberg beach that Dad believed was torn from Oupa's fishing jacket.

  So they went and cemented it into a little monument they built on the rocks at Smitswinkel Bay. Because some people believed Oupa was still alive, there wasn't much of a funeral. Only his family and Uncle Samuel were there, and Sanna Koerant and the Van der Merwes who had just come down from Tanzania to live in the Transvaal. It had

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  hardly been a full year before that Oupa had gone to fetch Uncle Samuel from Rhodesia after Uncle Samuel had escaped from Tanzania. Before Oupa drowned, Uncle Samuel had been hoping that Oupa would be there to celebrate his first apple-harvest from his new farm at Grabouw.

  We moved in here to live with Ouma soon after Oupa died. Use and I still shared a room then.

  Ouma always complained about backache. She thought it had something to do with Dad's difficult birth, because it was after he was born that her back problems began. When Ouma was complaining about her back again one day, Mum said they should go for X-rays. Mum said she was sure they could fix the problem, what with Chris Barnard already transplanting hearts just up the road and all the modern medicines available these days. If Neil Armstrong could walk on the moon, why on earth wouldn't they be able to do something about a simple backache?

  So Mum and Ouma went off to a specialist in Constantia, where all the snobs live. There they X-rayed Ouma's back. Mum told us later how shocked the doctor was when he called her to a separate room to show her the X-rays. There, in the middle of the picture, the cause of all Ouma's suffering could be seen: in her stomach, just below her ribs, was a small pair of scissors.

  Because Dad was so big when he was born, he couldn't be born like other babies, and they had to cut Ouma open. After that she couldn't have more babies, even though her and Oupa really wanted to. But all of that we only heard later, when the story about the scissors came out. The doctor who had taken Dad out had left the scissors inside Ouma's stomach, and Ouma had walked around with those stainless steel scissors inside her for all those years. The

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  specialist said it was definitely because of the scissors that Ouma could never have another child after Dad.

  When Dad heard about the scissors, he was furious. But what could he do? He wasn't even allowed to go back to Tanzania, where he was born. Dad said he would move mountains to see justice done, but who could he take to court? Even if he could go back, the country was in such chaos under the black government that the courts in Tanzania wouldn't even know it was wrong to sew up a pair of scissors in a woman's stomach.

  When Ouma went to hospital to have the scissors removed, we all went to Groote Schuur before the operation to visit her. Early the next morning the hospital phoned to say that Ouma had died under anaesthetic. The doctor said it was as though Ouma didn't want to live any more, because she wasn't really ill or even so very old. Mum said it was because Ouma didn't want to live without Oupa. What is left for a woman of Ouma's age once her husband dies? Mum said she could completely understand it, and maybe it was even better that way.

  That was the first time I saw Dad cry.

  At Ouma's funeral Sanna Koerant said men always cry when their mothers die, but only the men themselves know why. The mothers aren't there to see their tears anyway. 'Too close for comfort and too late for tears,' Sanna Koerant said, and Aunt Tienie glared at her through her own tears and shook her head for Sanna to keep quiet.

  Everyone from East Africa came to St James for the funeral: the Oberholzers and the Jacksons, and of course Sanna Koerant whose husband had died when Tanzania was still Tanganyika, and the Van der Merwes and the Prinsloos from the Transvaal. And then there was Hennie Labuchagne and his fat wife, and the Roelofses from Somerset West with their children like Philistines, and

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  Uncle Samuel and Tannie Betta, and the Davenports who came with the Colmans in their smart Cortina station-wagon. Some came all the way from Salisbury and South West and others from right up at Tsaneen in the Eastern Transvaal. As always when East Africans get together, they spoke a bit of Swahili and everyone said 'habar? this and ^mosour? that. The women in hats and black dresses, and the men all in black suits.

  Mum's younger sister, Tannie Karla, was also there. Through the service she held my and Use's hands.

  Afterwards, they all came to our house, to have tea and coffee with cake in the garden. Doreen and Chrisjan served everything and two of Doreen's daughters came to help in the kitchen. Aunt Ina Van der Merwe complained about the frost in the Transvaal and complimented Chrisjan on his lovely Christmas roses and the well-kept lawn. She said that Chrisjan's garden reminded her of her own in Oljorro. While she spoke Chrisjan just stood there, giving her his toothless grin.

  It was a huge funeral, since Oupa and Ouma had been very important and respected members of the East African community. It seemed as though it was Oupa's funeral as well, because after he drowned, and with all the searching that went on, Dad never really gave him a proper funeral.

  While the guests were standing around in the garden, Sanna Koerant had something to say about everyone, as usual. When she said something in the line of them all now being as south as south of Kilimanjaro would ever be, I saw the little muscle in Dad's cheek jump as it does when he gets angry.

  When they read Ouma's will, Use and I inherited some money which was put into a fixed deposit for us for one day when we go to university. I also inherited Ouma's old camphor-chest and when I moved into the new room,

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  Chrisjan carried it upstairs. I also got Oupa and Ouma's clothes closet with its full-length mirror in the oakwood door. Up against the wall abov
e my bed, we hooked the head of the Koedoe bull Oupa shot on the Serengeti. Its long curved horns almost touch the ceiling. Ouma always said that Oupa would have wanted me to have the Koedoe trophy, because I had never been given the chance to go hunting on the Serengeti with him.

  With all these things in my bedroom, and because it's all mine, my room is the best place in the whole house. When the roof-window is open, I can fall asleep at night with the sound of waves and the smell of salt water and sea bamboo coming in from the other side of the railway line. In the afternoons when I sit at my desk in front of the window, I can look out across the whole bay. And I'm lucky because the creaking of the stairs always gives Mum away when she sneaks up to check if I'm really doing my homework.

  Sometimes the whales come into the bay. In spring and summer I can sit and watch them for hours. I've seen them jump up into the air and then strike the water again, making the most terrible thunder and spray. Use says they do that when they're mating. But there aren't as many whales now as Jan Bandjies says were here years ago. One year we didn't even see a single one, and then Jan said it was because the bay doesn't belong to nature any more. He says the bay has been taken over by the factories.

  But I love my room, even when there aren't whales. Mum says we should just do something about reinforcing the floorboards which aren't as strong as they should be, especially with me getting bigger and with the extra bed up here for when Frikkie spends weekends. Once, when two of the knots fell right out of the pine beams, Mum told Dad they would have to be strengthened before one of them snapped and Frikkie or I broke our necks. Or how

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  embarrassing if one of our teachers should fall right through into the guest-room while Mum was showing them the house.

  Now that we are fully prepared, we are told to wait.

  After the initial alertness with which everything was brought into battle-readiness, I have to send the section leaders and platoon sergeants around with a simple command: Wait.

  While they again fall into some comfortable position - backs against the trees - the conversation invariably turns to Quito Caunavale. So much of their talk centres around that one battle three months ago. Since then everyone has become less self-assured. Slowly, with the years, I began taking notice of the changed attitudes - even before Quito. For more and more of the good ones, the option of permanently joining up no longer seemed viable; for more, a compulsion to leave the country. Even the eighteen-year-olds, those who come directly after completing high school, became more cynical. I noticed it everywhere - not only up here in the bush -even when I went back to Infantry School last year to train the cream of the crop - those selected for officers' course. Despite their commitment to getting rank, the signs of the times were there.

  The subtle change wasn V immediately conspicuous, not to the extent that the boys were fundamentally different from myself when I had arrived there for the first time. Yet, something was missing, something of the passion and gravity with which we came to the defence force just a few years ago. Back then, even the more negative amongst us accepted the two years of conscription as an inevitable reality which had to be put in the past, but one

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  which nonetheless the best had to be made of Now, that has become the attitude of those who are most positive -a dull shadow of irony already lying across the young faces - long before the war has done its dirty job; a shadow you notice only when you know what you're looking for.

  During a recent patrol just north of the Kunene, we passed through the ruins of a village called Chitado on the Ops-map. There was nothing exceptional about Chitado - it is just one of a thousand skeletons scattered across the Southern Angolan landscape. Years ago it may have been a quaint place - a small version of Grabouw or Bonnievale or Ladysmith. But now, in the aftermath of thirteen years of war, there was little to bear witness to any earlier period of life or beauty. In the ruins of the small Catholic church, where Portuguese women with shiny hair once murmured confessions, brown elephant grass grew from crags like tufts of hair from armpits, and the sun cast long shadows across what was once a neatly tiled floor. From dongas caused by hand-grenades and mortars exploding on the town square, thorn bushes now stood waist-high. Painted against the roofless grey walls of what were once homes was the evidence of countless military patrols that had passed through over the years: We are marching to Luanda' and *My nooi is in 'n Nartjie' and beneath that, in big black letters, 'Mine is in Krugersdorp

  Chitado repeats itself all around you - together with the tattered locals who flee the war with their scant bundles of earthly belongings. Thousands of the uprooted move in all directions, babies tied to the backs of bony mothers, bare-chested black men walking ahead and prodding the road to warn against lurking landmines which lie waiting to maim careless pedestrians in a cloud of rock

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  and metal, and black girls with missing limbs who hobble along on self-devised wooden legs, their arms hooked into forked branches that serve as crutches. We see it all.

  I am at my desk adjusting the red Porsche's connector with a screwdriver when Dad's Volvo turns in at the gates. There's someone in the car with him. I get up from the desk and press my face against the window-pane to see who it is. He parks in the driveway below my window. They stay in the car. Then both the Volvo's front doors open at the same time.

  I glance at Dad. He isn't wearing his uniform today. The other man is a bit taller, so he must be over six foot. His black hair is cut very short and he also has a moustache. He looks younger than Dad, but they've got almost the same build. They walk round to the boot, and it looks as if Dad is pointing out something in the direction of Simonstown. Dad takes the luggage from the boot, and the visitor's eyes glide across the house, over the big bay windows, the oak panes and shutters and the high white walls.

  Dad walks towards the front door and he follows. When he's almost right beneath my window he notices me looking down at him. Before I can pull away, he smiles up at me. His face is very brown, almost like a Malayan, and his teeth are very white. He carries on smiling and then lifts one hand and makes a sort of salute in my direction. I lift my hand and try to smile back while I bite my bottom lip. I'm embarrassed at being caught peeking out the window. Mum always says it's only Makoppelanders that peek out of windows. Then he follows Dad through the front door.

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  Perhaps that summer ultimately determined it. Possibly not even the whole summer - just that one week in December. Yet, by now, I know full-well that you cannot satisfactorily understand an event unless you have a picture of everything that accompanies it: the arrival of the visitor cannot be divorced from what preceded his coming. To understand my own choice, I need to muster as much of the detail as possible.

  It resembles an Ops-room or Ops-tent: the commander discusses everything, not only the heavy artillery. He demands exact statistics on the infantry, all troops, the morale of the different platoons and companies, the situation with victuals and the state of weapon-preparedness. It is essential to have a situation-report of even the smallest detail of the battle terrain, antiaircraft capability, right up to expected weather conditions. He requires reports on the nature of the enemy, their weapon strengths and weaknesses, how they think, what training they received, their readiness and loyalty to the cause. The language. Only once he has all of this - the cold objective facts - only then can he make an informed choice, his subjective intervention, his analysis, his battle plan. Only then does he become deadly.

  The evening the visitor arrives, Mum looks very beautiful again. She and Doreen are in the dining-room getting things ready for supper. When we have guests, Doreen doesn't leave for home until the food is on the table. The food is ready and dished into Mum's big porcelain set, so Doreen asks whether it's all right for her to leave. She says her youngest son, Little-Neville, is arriving by train tomorrow from Touwsrivier where he goes to school. I've never

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  seen Little-Neville, but Doreen talks about him a lot -much more than about any of her other children. She always says he's a clever boy and that she wants to give him an education. That's why she sends him to school in Touwsrivier, to get him away from the influences of Grassy Park and the Cape Flats. All the Coloureds live on the Cape Flats and at weekends they get drunk and then they murder and rape each other. Mum thinks Doreen made a good move by sending Little-Neville away. Mum is sick and tired of reading in Die Burger about the Coloured boycotts and the savage goings-on at the Coloured University on the Flats. No one could manage to study amongst those hooligans.

  Doreen has to fetch Little-Neville at Cape Town station tomorrow, so she asks Mum if she can come in to work a little late. Mum says yes but I can see she's irritated. Doreen is forever telling some story about why she was late, or why she's going to be late. But even though Mum complains about Doreen sometimes, we all love Doreen and I know Mum doesn't ever really get angry with her. Mum says a woman will have to go a long way to find another servant who is as reliable and willing as Doreen. After all these years she knows her place. She's not as forward and cheeky as Gloria, and she only speaks when spoken to - and even then she doesn't say much. Sometimes days pass without me knowing whether she's here or not. She also makes the nicest sandwiches for me to take to school, and during breaks everyone wants to swop with me. Sometimes she secretly packs a piece of leftover fridge-tart or some biscuits in my lunchbox. Mornings when Doreen comes into my bedroom with the lunchbox, I know there's a little surprise inside, because on other days she leaves our lunchboxes on the table in the foyer. Whenever the trains aren't on time and Doreen

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  arrives too late to make the sandwiches, Mum or Use end up making them and then they never taste as good. Use always puts peanut-butter and syrup on the sandwiches even though I can't stand it, because by break-time it's all mooshy and sucked into the bread and looks too disgusting to eat. Usually I just throw them away and bag some of Frikkie's lunch, or else I buy something from the tuck-shop.