The Smell of Apples: A Novel (14 page)

"'Ramblin' Rose, Ramblin' Rose . . . Why you ramble, no one knows . . ."' All the way home we sing along. When we get to St James Road Mum switches off the tape.

Before we get out of the car Mum pulls the brush through her hair a couple of times and wipes the loose blonde hairs off her blouse. She bends the rearview mirror down and puts on some lipstick. While she's colouring her lips she glances down at me from the corner of her eye and gives me a smile. She rubs her lips together and says:

'Your Mum doesn't look too bad for forty-four, or what do you say, my boy?' Although Mum's trying to look all serious, I can tell she's joking.

'Mum, you're much prettier than Mrs Delport.'

4 I say! Mrs Delport's at least ten years younger than me - you little flatterer.' And she bends across and kisses me on the cheek. Before I open the door she quickly wipes the lipstick off my cheek with her thumb while her other fingers rest on my chin:

l One day Mum's boy is going to break all the girls' hearts with these beautiful eyes and long lashes.'

We have breakfast on the veranda where it's nice and cool, and the view is better than from the dining-room. Dad puts a Bach record on to the high-fi and the music drifts out into the garden. Just like on the other side of the mountain, there are lots of sail boats moving across the bay. Mum says it's a good thing we'll be off in a few days' time; with this good weather the place will be swarming with holidav-makers from all over the countrv.

Mark Behr

After breakfast Dad leafs through the paper. He says there's been another terrorist attack in Mozambique. He says the Portuguese are too stupid to run their country properly. Frelimo is getting stronger every day. I think about the Portuguese who bought the cafe above Frikkie's house, after they came here from Mozambique. Frikkie and I always call the kids Frelimos. Then they get mad and chase us right up to the Delports' front gate. If they want to follow us into the garden, we threaten them that we're going to call the police, and we tell them that this is South Africa and not Mozambique. If they can't learn to behave like human beings, they should go straight back where they came from.

The General says he thinks Chile should be grateful for not having so many blacks. At least things are looking up in his country. Chile has managed to get rid of the worst Communists at long last. He says the Republic should get rid of the leaders who are the real trouble-makers. If we take the leaders out, we can get rid of the brain of the revolution. That's what they did in Chile, he says. In September they got rid of the cancer that was causing all the trouble. His name was Salvador Allende. The General says the Republic can actually learn quite a bit from what they're doing in Chile. Good military control, that's all you need to prevent the rot from setting in.

Later in the morning Mum says we should go for a drive to Cape Point, to show the General where the two oceans meet. The General sits next to Dad in the front, and Mum and me and Use sit in the back. While we drive along, the General tells us about Chile and how beautiful it is there. Every time Dad or Mum point to something at the side of the road or up against the mountains, he says: 'Que, hermoso es hermoso . . . Parts of Chile look so much like this!' And then he tells us about the city Santiago,

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where he lives with his wife and son. He also tells us about the military academy, Escuela Militar, where he studied. He says it's the West Point of Chile, and he wanted to go there ever since he was a boy. He says the mountains here at the southern tip of Africa are almost as beautiful as the Andes Mountains in Chile. But then he laughs again. High up in the Andes, he says, there's a huge statue of Jesus Christ, El Christo Redentor de Los Andes, that keeps watch over the people of Chile and Argentina.

Every time he speaks he looks back to explain things to us, and when he says again something about the way it looks in Chile, Use says: 4 It sounds . . . hermoso, hermosoV

He laughs and looks at her for a long time with his blue eyes, then he says: 'Si, senorita, si, si? And we all laugh because Use doesn't know what to say and she stares from the window and it looks like she's blushing.

Mum says she often thinks about what must have gone through the minds of Van Riebeeck's sailors when they first came to the Cape and saw this beautiful country. The General says one could probably ask the same question about Columbus when he first came to America.

Then he asks me whether I've gotten over yesterday's fight with the shark. I say yes, I have. But my arms and back are stiff, and I'm so ashamed about losing it so close to the beach that I don't know whether I'll ever forget it.

Just before first light they're around us. Their shots strike into the branches around us. They must have been aware of our position for quite some time - because with the first shots comes the droning of approaching gunships. There's no time to pick up the radio. Instinctively I grab only the small webbing and my rifle. Thank God we sleep with our ammo-pouches secured to our bodies. I start running.

Mark Behr

I try to shout above the noise that we can V return fire unless we have the enemy in our sights, but it i no use. I scream for them to run. Branches whip across my face and forearms as I run through the half-dark. Behind me I hear a slight thud, and seconds later the ground around me bursts open as the mortars strike their target. I shout again for everyone to get the hell away before the choppers arrive - before it's light and they can pick us off from the air like antelope.

The next mortar strikes and I hear someone scream. In the branches above my head, tracers fly past like deadly fireflies, and my head pounds from the noise. Almost tripping over a discarded webbing, I suddenly know there i nothing I can do for them any more. From this moment on it i each man for himself. I allow myself a quick glance over my shoulder, then speed up and pray that God be merciful.

The noise grows more distant and I settle into a pace I can sustain. I try all the time to push the troops from my mind. After an hour there's still no sign of any of them. The first red clouds of morning appear in the east and I head in that direction. I can only hope that those who managed to get out alive are running like hell to get as far from the base as possible. It is for the wounded I am most concerned.

By noon I must find water, even though I know I shouldn V stop. Once you ve stopped, broken the rhythm of the body's automatic drive, it i difficult getting it back. But my lips are cracked and I can feel blisters swelling like fiery funguses from my feet. Slowing down, I spot a smallish water-hole in amongst a thicket of thorn trees.

Even the sight of vile brown water makes my thirst unbearable, and I must force myself to first make sure that everything is safe. I look and listen while I try to

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hold my breath, at the same time fighting the urge to plunge into that water and get rid of the coals that consume my chest.

Eyes combing every dark patch amongst the trees, I make my way forward. Holding the R4 in my one hand, I squat down on one knee and with the free hand I scoop water to my mouth. I drink as much as I can, and then move back into cover.

My stomach cramps from all the water and I sit down with my back against a tree. Not even the sound of a bird in the trees. Only the omnipresent monotone of the cicadas and the rumbling from the north.

I wonder what Dad is doing at this moment. Has he been informed that there has been no radio contact with us this morning? Is he giving angry orders for them to come and find his son?

Now Vm alone, Dad.

Without a single one of my men.

I keep wondering about the troops. No training could have properly prepared them for what happened this morning. Last night I could hardly bring myself to give them orders.

'If there's a contact during the night, we just cut a line to Qalueque in the east,' / said to the black section-leader, and told him to go around with the instruction. I barely looked at him while I spoke. Only when he began walking away from me in the dusk, I spoke after him:

'Why are you here?' I asked, and half surprised he turned around. He stood staring at me with a puzzled expression as though at last I'd gone completely crazy.

7 m asking you why you are here - in Angola?'

I stopped myself from asking why he is fighting against his own freedom. I waited for his answer, I waited to hear him say that theirs is a form of economic conscription, that

Mark Behr

he was here only because he was unable to find a decent job on account of the system. Eventually he shrugged and answered:

'To make war, Lieutenant. We are not like the Cubans who take women to fight. It's men that must make war!

I smiled at him and said: 'Ja . . . God knows . . . eventually you blacks could end up being the same as the bloody whites. '

He looked at me for a moment, and then asked: 'Who else should we be like, Lieutenant?'

As he walked away into the falling dusk, I looked at his narrow back beneath the uniform, and his dark neck seemed unexpectedly vulnerable.

From Muizenberg, all through St James and Kalk Bay, many of the houses are more than a hundred years old. Members of Parliament and all the rich Capetonians came here for their vacation in the olden days. Before the war, when Oupa Erasmus arrived, it was still the holiday place. After the war the rich English started moving away to Sea Point, Three Anchor Bay and Clifton, on the Atlantic side of the mountain. But lots of English people still live here, like the Spiros and the Smiths and the Wileys. The only ones we really know are the Spiros, whose twins are almost as old as me. Like all Jews they're stinking rich, and Mister Spiro owns all the Mobil petrol stations in the peninsula. They live in a huge double-storey close to the Rhodes Cottage.

In Kalk Bay the houses are even older than in Muizenberg and St James, because that's where the first fishermen came to live and where they built the harbour. At first it was called Kalkhoven Bay, because of the chalk they mined there. But after they realised they could make

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more money from whaling, they closed down the chalk mine and built the harbour.

Back then, thousands of whales came into the bay every year. The boat that belonged to Jan Bandjies' great oupagrootjie from Java used to bring in eighty to a hundred whales some years. And his boat was only one of many. Everything went well until the Battle of Muizenberg in the 1800s, when the English took over the Cape. Many boats were taken away from the fishermen, and most of them had to find work on English ships or in factories, because the small boats couldn't compete with the big ships. Since our government built nice homes for the fishermen higher up the track, there are even less boats going out of the Kalk Bay harbour every morning.

St James is named after the first little church that was built here. Against the post-office wall there are pretty coloured tiles that make up a picture of people going into the old church. They're wearing strange pointy hats and they've got dark skin and narrow eyes, so maybe they came from the east or somewhere else.

The railway-line was built while the Cape was still under the British. Building the track was a big thing, because the fishermen wanted it up against the hill, behind the towns. But the English just ignored them and built it down here along the shore. Dad says if the British had only listened to the fishermen, our property would be worth even more, because now our house is separated from the beach by the track. But, with the mountains all around, it's still one of the most beautiful places in the country. Dad also said so one day when he and I parked the car at the top of Sir Lowries Pass and looked down over the whole of False Bay. It was just before sunset on our way back from Uncle Samuel's farm in Grabouw and the whole back seat of the car was stacked up with apples. The apples

Mark Behr

lay on a bed of wood shavings inside their little plywood crates so that they wouldn't get bruised. The crates were stacked so high you could hardly see out the back window. When Dad and I got out of the car to look at the sunset, the whole sky was turning dark red. The bay was as flat as a mirror, with Table Mountain pitch-black above the city lights in the distance. We stood up there, looking down on it, and Dad said there's nothing more beautiful in the world than what we were seeing in front of us. He said nothing and no one could ever take it from us. All of us, specially the Afrikaners who lost everything in Tanganyika, had suffered enough. People like Uncle Samuel could bear witness to that. And then Dad told me the story again:

When Uncle Samuel came out, he had to escape by aeroplane from Tanganyika to Salisbury. The blacks, under Julius Nyerere, wanted to force him to pay his debts to the bank - and that after they had confiscated his farms. One day he just received a letter saying the government was taking over his land, and that on such and such a day he had to be off the farm. A few days later he received another letter saying he had to start making his repayments to the bank. They took away his passport and told him that he wasn't allowed to leave the country until he had paid off his debts. It had been a good crop that year and he had bought six new John Deere tractors, so his debts to the bank were very big. Uncle Samuel's fields in the Oljorro district stretched as far as the eye could see and he even had a small spray-plane to spray pesticide over the export crops. You never had to use fertiliser like here in Grabouw, because in Tanganyika the ground is so rich, everything just grows by itself.

But suddenly everything was taken away from them.

So Uncle Samuel sent Tannie Betta and Barrie and Marion to get on to the Kenya-ship in Mombasa. The new

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government thought they were just coming to the Republic to visit relatives. Sanna Koerant came with them - even though everyone was petrified of her big mouth giving away all the plans. Before they left, Uncle Samuel gave Tannie Betta a letter to give to Oupa Erasmus once they got here. In the letter he asked Oupa Erasmus to fix it that on such and such a day the airport in Salisbury would know that an aeroplane was coming in from Tanganyika. The man on board wouldn't have a passport.