The Smell of Apples: A Novel (6 page)

"Ja dis ekj I start, almost forgetting to change to English, 4 I mean, yes, it's me.'

I wipe off the cream that's dripping from my chin.

North of us, Van Schoor and his men are cornered. I can hear him calling HQ over the radio. With the radio on, the sounds of battle are right here in our midst. At times Van Schools voice disappears in the noise of tanks and mortar fire. His platoon is trying to move north-east, towards Techipa, hut Cuban tanks and armoured cars have cut them off. He calls over the radio, telling HQ that his platoon is done for, they can V run any more, he begs Ruacana to send in the Imp alas. But we already know, the Impalas can't get near without being taken down by the MiGs.

My section-leaders come to ask whether we We going to move.

'No, ' / answer into their confused faces, 'well wait for orders from HQ. We don V know what i going on out there. We could walk smack-bang into an ambush. '

The black section-leader stares at me after the others have turned away. He is one of two Xhosas in the platoon. Not that it matters up here. Our faces are all blackened and at this stage he knows I'm as frightened as him, and bullets don 7 know the meaning of discrimination. While he's staring at me, it is again as if nothing up here seems to matter, and I leave the radio's volume turned up, making sure he can hear Van Schoor's hoarse voice calling to the Colonel for help. He is shouting in Afrikaans and English and Portuguese - all at once.

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Before Dad has his shower and drives to work every morning, he takes a plastic bag with old bread and dry porridge that Doreen puts out, and comes to feed the seagulls below my window. Whenever Dad's away with army business, it's my job to get up and feed them. When we're all away, like during the holidays when we're at Sedgefield, the gulls must make a plan and find their breakfast somewhere else, or they must be satisfied with what they can get down at the harbour.

On sunny mornings in summer, there's already a flock of twenty or so sitting out on the lawn waiting for Dad to come out. After so many years they know the story, so they know that Dad comes through the front door with their breakfast just before six every morning. Some have been coming to our garden for such a long time that Dad can identify them from a tiny mark on their legs or from markings on their beaks or wings.

The moment the front door opens, they make such a racket that I sometimes wake up. I lie and listen to them for a few minutes and fall asleep again after all the screeching dies down. On mornings when I feel like getting up early, I go downstairs when the squawking starts. The ones that have been sitting, waiting on the lawn, fly up in a flash, and from all directions the latecomers fall from the sky like small torpedoes. Sometimes it looks like the whole of False Bay's gulls are coming down on our house. Then things turn into a real circus, as they try pushing each other aside, screeching and shoving with their wings to be the first to get at the food. They whirl around our heads and pick the food from our fingertips. When we roll the porridge into small round balls and throw it high up into the sky, it's like a fountain of feathers bursting up into the blue heaven. When one of them gets the ball before it's reached a good height, the others come down again and complain bitterly.

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When they hover around our heads and in front of our faces, it looks as if they're paddling with their wings, and their legs and little webbed feet move to and fro like little oars. We can't help laughing at them, because they push their heads forward as if they're begging and they want us to see how hungry they are. Dad feels sorry for them sometimes, and then I fetch some Herzoggies from one of the tins in the kitchen, so that we can spoil them a little. While I'm in the kitchen getting the biscuits, they wait out there, still squawking and hovering around Dad. They trust him because they know him.

On the Simonstown side of my room, against the window-pane, there's a photograph of Dad with boxing gloves. With his gloves facing forward, he's looking at the camera with his head cocked to one side. He's still very young.

We sometimes go to the boxing in the Good Hope Centre, or at other times we listen to the matches on the radio. When Arnold Taylor knocked out Romeo Anaya of Mexico and became the world champion, it was an almighty big day for the Republic. We listened to the fight on the radio, and when they played 'Die Stem', Dad had tears in his eyes.

Just before the General came, we also listened when Pierre Fourie fought against Bob Foster in Johannesburg. It was the first time in the Republic that a non-white fought against a white. The referee let Foster win because he's black, even though Pierre should have won the match. But overseas they're bringing politics into sports, and they discriminate against us white South Africans.

The other big hero for Dad and me is Gary Player. Dad always says that Springboks may come and go, but the one Springbok that will always wear the green and gold is Gary Player.

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Next to Dad with the boxing gloves is another photograph of him with Uncle PW Botha. It was taken when Uncle PW became the Minister of Defence. Dad says his money is on Uncle PW to pull the wagon through the drift. He says the politicians are making a mess of things, and it's time the defence force showed them how things ought to be done. Our hope for the future rests on men like Uncle PW.

In another frame there's a photograph of Mum singing. Use says it was taken when Mum was Dido in the opera. She's wearing a long nightdress that falls in folds around her feet. In the bottom corner there's an inscription in white ink: To Leonore - lest you ever forget to use your voice, Mario. I think Mario was the guy who sang in the opera with Mum.

Sometimes, when Dad isn't home, you can hear Mum singing at the piano in the lounge, or in the bathroom. She sings all kinds of stuff from the operas and I think she might be missing the concerts and the overseas trips. Whenever she sings in the bath it's as if the whole house goes quiet to listen. Late one afternoon, when I went downstairs while she was singing, I found Doreen standing quietly in the passage, holding her rag and bucket in one hand, just listening to Mum's voice fill the house. When Doreen saw me, she quickly bent forward, and made as if she was wiping something from the floor. Then she quietly walked into the kitchen. I think she was ashamed for being caught out, because when she left for the train a while later she didn't even say goodbye.

Dad and Mum don't want Use and me to travel to school by train. In one week two white women were raped by Coloureds at Salt River Station. It's the most dreadful of dreadful disgraces if a woman gets raped. Mum says it's even dangerous these days for young boys on the train,

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because you get exposed to all kinds of bad influences.

So Mum drives us around in her green Volkswagen Beetle. When she's parked outside the school gates between all the other Beetles we can spot her a mile away because hers has a little black roof. There are always so many Beetles parked in front of Jan Van Riebeeck that we could easily walk to the wrong one. Whenever we're on the open road playing road-cricket, we're not allowed to choose Beetles, because there are thousands of them, and whoever chooses them always ends up winning.

Mum fits in her singing lessons between the driving around. At the beginning of each week, Use and I must tell her exactly when we have after-school activities. That way Mum can cancel some of her lessons in advance if one of us needs to be picked up or dropped off somewhere. Jan Van Riebeeck Primary finishes earlier than the high school, so I'm not as dependent on Ma, because I just go and wait for her at Frikkie's house after cricket or rugby. This year Frikkie and I also started doing karate at the gym in Buitenkant Street.

On Friday afternoons we have Voortrekkers. I'm the team leader and Frikkie is my deputy. Our team is the Lions and our motto is: Voorwaarts. The Spiro twins are Boy Scouts and we always fight about which is better: Voortrekkers or Boy Scouts. We always say the Boy Scouts is naff. Use used to be a Voortrekker until last year. But when she came back from Holland, she said she was lagging behind in her school-work because of all her activities. When she stopped Voortrekkers, Dad was very disappointed, because Use would definitely have become a Presidentsverkenner; only the top Voortrekkers become Presidentsverkenners.

Because Use is so good at everything and because she's older than me, she has more after-school activities. In the

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winter she plays netball on Mondays and Wednesdays, and in summer she sometimes has athletics three times a week. Besides her sport, she also has an extra music lesson on Friday afternoons at the College of Music, and she also accompanies the Jan Van Riebeeck choir. For the hour Use's music lesson lasts, Mum waits in the car. Even though it can't be nice for Mum to sit in the car like that, I don't care much that the music lesson is on Friday afternoons because it gives Dad and me some time to be alone. Dad has installed a modern radio and tape-player into the Beetle for Mum to listen to music while she's driving around or waiting.

Before, when we had to wait for Use, we used to visit Tannie Karla, when she still lived in a flat in Sea Point. But after Mum and Tannie Karla had the big argument, we never went back.

Other afternoons, while we wait for Use at the high school, Mum and I listen to the Afrikaans serials on Springbok Radio. My favourite is Die Wildtemmer, about the ranger on the game-farm. The woman in the story is Jenny, with red hair like Zelda Kemp. The ranger in the story's name is Le Grange, and the game-farm is Randall's Ranch. The story always makes me think of Oupa Erasmus in Tanganyika. Uncle Samuel has lots of cines and photographs of Oupa going on safari close to Kilimanjaro and Meru. In the winter, when it's cold and rainy, we sometimes drive out to Grabouw, and watch Uncle Samuel's films. Dad and Uncle Samuel always tell us great stories about Tanganyika and about Oupa Erasmus and about how good it was to live in East Africa.

Dad was only three weeks old when Oupa and Ouma took him on his first elephant safari. Sanna Koerant loves telling the story about the time only the women were in the camp and the Masai came. Dad was sleeping in his cot

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and Sanna Koerant, Ouma Erasmus and Tannie Betta were playing cards on camp chairs close by. Some Masai women came out of the bushes and walked up to Dad's cot. Before Ouma could do anything, one of them picked him out of his cot and held him against her while all the others came and stood around. Ouma wanted to scream or fire some shots to scare them off, but Sanna Koerant put her hand on Ouma's arm and told her to sit still. She said the Masai were giving Dad their blessing. As soon as the half-naked women had strolled off, Ouma rushed to the cot to see if Dad was all right. Because the Masai never wash and because they drink real blood, Ouma was worried that Dad would catch some terrible disease. When the Masai walked off into the bushes again, Ouma told the servants to heat pots full of water so that she could scrub Dad. Old Sanna always howls with laughter when she tells how Ouma poured half a bottle of disinfectant into the water before she scrubbed Dad, who was screaming blue murder.

Ouma scrubbed and scrubbed until she thought she'd killed all the germs. Then she rinsed Dad with clean water. Sanna says she laughed at Ouma so much because of all the scrubbing that Ouma got quite angry with her and told her she didn't know how one woman could be so insensitive to another. When old Sanna has finished telling the story, she cackles with laughter again, and her little teeth curl out over her thin bottom lip like yellow mealie pips.

Tannie Betta once said that all the white children who grew up near Meru have yellow teeth. Uncle Samuel said it's true, you can go and look at the children of Kilimanjaro, their teeth are all white. Then old Sanna burst out laughing again, and she asked: 'Where are the children of Kilimanjaro?' Uncle Samuel got upset with her and said she shouldn't start her nonsense again.

When IVlum's students come to our house for singing

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lessons, I have to behave quietly, politely and keep in the background. I know the rhyme off by heart already, and I repeat it silently to myself when Mum says: 'Marnus, my boy, today you must be quiet, polite and in the background. The students pay a lot of money for their lessons. Money doesn't grow on trees . . .'

'Quietpoliteandinthebackground,' I say over and over to myself while I race the Porsches around the track. I can hear Mum at the piano in the guest-lounge, doing scales with one of her students. Up and down he sings the same notes, until I can't stand it any more and I shut my door.

It's Friday afternoon and the General is off somewhere again with Dad. So Dad won't be home early today, like he usually is on Fridays. That's a pity, because I'm getting bored with the Scalextric. The longer I have it, the less fun it is to drive both cars myself. It's much better when someone else drives one and we can race each other. But I'm really disappointed because Dad isn't here and I hate it when something happens that keeps him from home on Friday afternoons. That means I'll probably have to go along with Mum to Use's stupid music lesson. It also means that Dad and I have missed out on our weekend swim. If Dad were here now, we'd go swimming at Sealrock along Muizenberg beach, and after that we would sit on the front veranda together playing chess and listening to music while the sun set behind the mountains.

Friday afternoons are the best times for Dad and me. We go for a long walk along Muizenberg beach, and while we walk to the spot we call Sealrock, we talk about the week and about everything there's hardly ever time for because Dad has to work so hard. We know almost all the fishermen who fish from the shore and along our way we ask whether the fish are biting and whether they heard about this or that one who caught such and such a fish at

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this or that spot. The old fishermen call Dad mister and I wonder what they would think if they knew that he's really a general.