The Smell of Apples: A Novel (12 page)

After they leave, I turn around and walk back up to the fishing bag, where Frikkie's waiting. Neither of us say anything. Frikkie pours coffee from the flask, and passes me one of the tin mugs. I sit down to drink, but I can hardly lift the mug. My arms feel like lead, and I start crying again. I don't care if Frikkie sees, even if he never cries. The tears fall into the mug of steaming coffee. I stare out to sea, and I wish . . . But before I can even think it, I remember the orphans in the beach house, and I drink

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my coffee and try to think about something else.

Later on, Frikkie says: 'You know, you almost had that fuckin' shark.'

'Fuckin' almost,' I answer. 'Frikkie,' I ask, 'have you ever felt a weight like that on a line before?'

He shakes his head and says: 'I swear I thought it was a whale at first, but like you say, they don't get this close to the beach.'

We pack up the fishing gear to go home.

At night, after the light has been turned off, Frikkie asks me why the General speaks Spanish if he comes from Chile. I say I don't know, but I think Chile used to belong to Spain. While we're speaking, I remember last night in the bathroom, and I tell Frikkie about the scar I saw across the General's back.

'How do you think he got it?' he asks, and I say it must be from the war in Chile. It looks as if a mortar or something could have burned the mark down his back.

'I wish I could see it,' he says.

I lie on my back thinking for a while, then I suggest that we roll back the carpet, and peep through the holes in the floorboards.

We move carefully to make sure the floor doesn't creak. Lying down on our stomachs, we take turns to look down into the guest-room. On the floor beneath us, the General is standing staring out of the window. He is completely naked. His back is turned in our direction. Across it, stretching from his one shoulder right down to the other hip, we can see the scar, curled almost like a snake. We peer down at him in silence. Even though it's quite a way down to where he is, I hold my breath.

'Can you see his muscles?' Frikkie whispers and I look up from the hole and put my finger to my lips. Frikkie

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gets another chance to look and then we roll the carpet back quietly and get into bed.

'Did you see those arms?' Frikkie whispers.

4 Ja,' I answer, feeling more tired than I've felt in my whole life, 'but Dad's are much bigger.' Just before I fall asleep I think about Jan Bandjies who told me once that it might be true that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, but whatever fish it was couldn't have been a whale. Because, said Jan, as big as whales are, so tiny are their throats. Not a damn could Jonah have slid down the narrow throat of a whale.

One of the lieutenants was killed yesterday when a T-54 hit a Ratel. HQ isn't saying how many others were wounded in the attack. A year ago, the one who died was one of my Candidate Officers on the course at Infantry School. At fire and movement no one could hold a candle to him. He spoke Afrikaans with a heavy English accent, but he spoke it, nonetheless. During section leadership and Vasbyt, it was clear that he would turn out to be the best officer on the course. It was hard to believe he was only eighteen. At times even I felt a tinge of jealousy at his perfect inspections and brilliant 2,4 times. I once asked him how a Soutpiel managed to run a 2,4 with webbing, staaldak en geweer, in under seven minutes. He laughed and said that I should remember that all souties aren 't softies.

A hundred thousand rands' worth of training later, and there seems so little to show for it. I think about his parents who don't know of his death yet. It's also possible that they never knew he was up here.

But Dad knows I'm here. I wonder, if anything should happen to me, how long will it be before they tell him?

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Probably at once. And how will he tell Mum? Will he park his car in the driveway, look out over the bay and then walk slowly up the veranda stairs, weighing the words to use? Or has he covered that ground a thousand times already?

But the one whose life ended yesterday, his parents will have to wait. And they won 7 ever know what happened to their son.

Frikkie leaves his bike at our house, because he's coming to stay over again when school ends, day after tomorrow. And the Chopper doesn't fit into the Beetle anyway. Doreen catches a ride to town with us. She and Frikkie sit on the back seat, and she's as quiet as a mouse. She still hasn't heard from Little-Neville. She's going to the station again to see whether he'll arrive today. She has one of Mum's old suitcases with her, because if Little-Neville isn't at the station, she wants to go to Touwsrivier to see what's going on. Doreen can't call her sister in Touwsrivier because they don't have a phone there. Mum says she should phone the police in Beaufort and ask them to go and find out whether anything has happened to Little-Neville. But Doreen says her sister lives far out of town, and she wants to go and find out for herself. Mum says Doreen is chasing up ghosts and she's sure Little-Neville's going to be sitting at the station this morning, waiting for her. Mum says Doreen probably just mixed up the dates of when the Coloured schools break up.

Mum puts on her dark glasses and turns on the tape player to listen to some jazz. At home Dad doesn't like us listening to jazz. Dad likes classical music, so Mum doesn't want us to tell him about the jazz in the car. Dad says jazz is just one step away from pop music. It belongs

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in nightclubs like Charlie Parkers at Sea Point, not in a Christian home like ours. Frikkie's father and mother went to Charlie Parkers once, but that was just because they had to go with some of their English friends.

Whenever we speak about Dad and the jazz, Mum says we should keep it as our secret. She laughs and says Dad is still a bit old fashioned about music. Mum often sings along with the music, or sometimes she and Use do all kinds of harmonies. I like it best when they do 'Summer Time' with Ella Fitzgerald, or 'Ramblin' Rose', with Nat King Cole. At times when I'm angry with Mum, I've thought of threatening her that I'll tell Dad about the jazz. But usually I'm too scared of even reminding her, let alone telling Dad. Besides, as Mum says: 'We all have our little secrets.'

It's the same as the secret visits we used to make to Tannie Karla, and the thing about Tannie Karla's smoking. Mum has never told Ouma Kimberley that Tannie Karla smoked, even though she knows smoking is a sin. Mum said it would only hurt Ouma unnecessarily. If Ouma was to find out, she'd think she'd failed in the upbringing of her daughters. It's terrible to Mum when a woman smokes, and it's even worse that her own sister does it.

Sometimes Mum sings while she's playing the piano. But she never sings when there are other people at the house. Then she only accompanies Use. Dad's favourite song is the one Schubert wrote about the trout, and Mum usually accompanies while Use sings. I like the song because it's Dad's favourite, but I can't stand Use's sharp voice and how she's always so full of sights whenever she sings. She throws her head round all the time and she stands with her hand under her breast like Maria Callas on one of Dad's record covers.

When the school or the symphony or anyone asks Mum

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to perform, she just says no, she took a decision. But at home Mum sometimes sings in Dutch and Flemish and I can understand the words because it's almost just like Afrikaans. The best song Mum sings is 'Remember Me'. Use says it's the last song Mum sang when she was Dido in the opera. Even though all the words are just 'Remember me, Remember me', I like it best of all the songs Mum sings. Maybe part of why I like it so much is because Mum sang it a lot while Dad was fighting in Rhodesia. At night, after Use and I were in bed, Mum always went to the piano. One night, while she was singing 'Remember Me', I came down to listen. I watched her at her big grand piano. While she sang, the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Mum cries like that when Dad's away, because we miss him so much. The thing I'm most frightened of in the whole world is that something might happen to Dad in the war. When I got scared while Dad was in Rhodesia, I always went to sleep with Mum. Mum always pulled me close to her and said we should take Dad to the Lord in prayer, because God fights on the side of the righteous.

Driving along through Plumstead and Wynberg, then through Rondebosch, we listen to Nat King Cole sing 'Ramblin' Rose'. At some places in the song Mum does a descant, and I turn around to see if Frikkie and Doreen are listening. Doreen smiles at me, but I can see she's in a funny mood. Mum sometimes does a descant with the congregation in church. I get quite shy, because the children in the front pews always turn round to stare at us. It's especially bad when Use does the descant with Mum, because Use's voice makes fast trills that I hate.

I sang in the school choir when I was in Standard One, but Dad said I didn't have to sing if I didn't want to. Dad never makes us do anything we don't really want to. If I

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want to sing in the choir, I can, but it's just that I'm not as musical as Mum and Use. I also got bored with all the singing, even though I like listening when Mum sings. That same year, the music teacher entered me and Hanno Louw for solo singing in the eisteddfod. We sang a song called 4 Ek marsjeer nou deur Suid-Afrika', about marching through the country and looking at the beautiful mountains and the sea. Hanno got a silver diploma and me a bronze. That was my first and last solo. From then on we called everyone who sang, poofters. Except when Mum's around, because she says it's disgusting to call someone that just because he sings. She says you aren't a poofter just because you sing, but Dad just laughs and says he's not so sure.

Mum's been singing since she was a little girl. She once said it was a miracle that she had gone from a small town like Kimberley right on to the opera stage. God's grace and lots of hard work. That's what Mum calls her singing talent. She had to work hard because she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Mum knows what it's like to be without money. Use read an article about Sophia Loren in Die Huisgenoot, and she said Mum almost has the same history. Sophia Loren grew up in the slums of Italy but she still managed to become famous. Not that Kimberley is exactly like Italy, but poverty's the same everywhere. It's much more difficult for a poor child to succeed in life than it is for a rich one. I'm sure that's why Mum is so caught up with Zelda Kemp.

But mostly Mum doesn't like speaking about when she was little. Except when I'm lazy or ungrateful. Then she tells me about the days when she was still small and had to live in the school hostel in Mafeking, and she only saw Oupa and Ouma at the end of every term. Oupa didn't have a car and the elements in the Kalahari, where they farmed, made their lives too terrible for words. That was

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before the drought forced them to move to Kimberley.

We never knew Oupa Kimberley, as we call him, because he died before we were born. Ouma still lives in the old age home in Kimberley, because she wants to be close to Oupa's grave. She comes to visit us once a year, and usually she comes by train around Easter and stays for a month. But Tannie Karla doesn't visit us any more, because Dad told her never to put her foot in our house again.

Tannie Karla was a laatlam who was born after they arrived in Kimberley. She's much younger than Mum, and only about twelve years older than Use. Until a while back, she used to visit us every holiday. She went fishing with me, and she climbed up Muizenberg Mountain with me and Use. Once, when we had a picnic, she and Use wove purple heather garlands that we put on our heads and we spent the whole day like that up on the mountain. Of everyone in our family, Tannie Karla used to be our favourite. She always made us laugh, and when she was with us even Mum seemed different. Later, when Tannie Karla was at university in Stellenbosch, she often came to visit over weekends, and once Use went and stayed in the university residence with her for a whole weekend.

But things with Tannie Karla started changing when she finished university and went to work at the Cape Times. Everyone asked her why she wasn't going to Die Burger, but she said she wanted to improve her English and she could only do that if she worked for an English newspaper. And it was there that she got mixed up with the Liberals. When she started wearing platform shoes and jeans, Dad said she was acting more like someone who had studied at 'Moscow on the Hill', than at his Alma Mater. When she came to visit, she and Dad had lots of arguments, and eventually Dad said he'd had enough of her strange ideas. He didn't want her coming into our house any more.

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But to us, Tannie Karla seemed no different from the times before she got mixed up with the Liberals at the Cape Times. Before she left the Cape Times to go overseas, Mum still used to take us to visit her secretly at her flat in Camps Bay. But we weren't allowed to tell Dad, because Dad said she was mixing with blacks and saying things against the government. Dad says it was the Liberals that murdered Verwoerd in his own blood in '66, right inside Parliament. Dad says that's the only time Helen Suzman's moaning and groaning about the poor Bantus was stopped for a few moments. She shut up after Uncle PW turned to her and told her that she and her Liberal collaborators were responsible for the Prime Minister's assassination.

But, because Tannie Karla is Mum's sister, we kept on visiting her. Until one day. It happened one afternoon while Dad was in Rhodesia. We were all sitting on the veranda of the Carousel in Sea Point, eating ice cream. We laughed a lot, and Tannie Karla made funny comments about all the people sitting around us. Later on, she and Mum got into an argument, because Tannie Karla was saying things Mum didn't like. Tannie Karla said she thought it was a disgrace that we never even went to the trouble of finding out why Chrisjan hadn't come back to work. After all, she said, he had worked in the garden for more than thirty years. Mum said it wasn't necessary for us to go looking for him to find out why he walked off.