The Smell of Apples: A Novel (7 page)

When we reach Sealrock, and only if there aren't other people anywhere near us on the beach, we go up the dunes and take off all our clothes, and then we run down to the sea and into the waves - completely starkers. Dad gives me a bit of a head start, and then I sprint down the dunes and across the beach to see if I can get to the water before him. Sometimes I make it, but other times he catches me from behind and he picks me up and carries me under his arm, right into the waves. I shout and scream like mad for him to wait, but before I know what's coming, we crash down into the breakers. The water's so icy in winter that I almost lose my breath, but Dad says we're bulls who can't be scared off by a bit of cold water.

Then we swim out far beyond the breakers, and for a while we just float on our backs in the swell. Out there Dad is always very quiet, and if I speak too much he says I should keep quiet and listen to the sea and the gulls. If we're deep enough we can't even hear the cars driving along Strandfontein Road, and the specks of fishermen disappear behind the waves. Then it feels like Dad and I are the only people in the whole bay, and even though Dad never says so, I always think he's remembering Oupa Erasmus who went missing out there. When Dad wants to stay in the water for too long and I start getting tired, he turns around on to his stomach, and I hang on to his shoulders like a piece of floating sea-bamboo.

The first couple of times that Frikkie was with us, he was too scared to go in because he was frightened of the seals. Dad tried to explain to him that we've only seen seals out there a few times and that we'd come back to shore the moment Frikkie felt tired. I could see from

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Frikkie's face that his excuse about the seals was an old wives' tale and I think the real reason was that he can't swim as well as me. But Frikkie refused to budge and later on Dad and I went in alone while he stayed up against the dunes like a real little drip. I was irritated with him because Dad felt so sorry for him. Dad and I would just be in the water a couple of minutes before we'd have to go out because Dad was worried that Frikkie was unhappy. Dad said that Frikkie would come in once he saw there was nothing to be frightened of. He also said that I was not to tease Frikkie about his fear of water. One doesn't tease another about such fears, rather you help them to overcome the fear. I haven't ever teased Frikkie about it, although I've thought about it once or twice, when he gets smart-arsed with me.

It turned out just like Dad said, because after the third or fourth time, Frikkie took off his clothes without saying a word about the seals. Frikkie and I ran down the dune and got to the waves quite a while before Dad. I think maybe Dad let us get there first that time, just so that Frikkie wouldn't get scared from me screaming as Dad carries me into the waves. We used to come back to the beach when Frikkie got tired, but nowadays, since he's not scared any more, I hang on to Dad's shoulders and Frikkie hangs on to mine. Then the three of us float around for ages, back there behind the waves.

I go downstairs into the study to phone Frikkie and ask if he wants to come and visit. He's allowed to go on the train by himself, but first he has to call his mother at her shop to ask permission. When he comes to visit over weekends, Mum drives him home on Saturday night, so that he's there for Sunday school the next morning. But now the Sunday school is over for the year, so maybe he'll be able to stay for the whole weekend. During

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holidays we don't go to church as much as during term anyway.

The Delports go to the Groote Kerk next to Kruger Plain, and we are in the Dutch Reformed Fish Hoek congregation. Our church in Fish Hoek was built when the little stone church in Kalk Bay got too small for all the False Bay Afrikaners. Andrew Murray was the first dom-inee in the Kalk Bay church and now it's a sort of national monument. Dominee Cronje has been the minister in Fish Hoek for years, and everyone knows him and Mrs Dominee. They live in a big double-storey pastorie that looks out across the long beach at Fish Hoek. Whenever we go and visit them, Mum and Mrs Dominee mostly speak about the flower arrangements and cake sales for church, and Dad tells Dominee about national affairs. The pastorie has a big entrance foyer that's covered in beautiful stinkwood panelling. As you come into the pastorie, there are oil paintings and all kinds of hand-woven carpets that Mrs Dominee brings back from her trips to Israel and other countries. One of the big paintings in the foyer is of a father and his children on the beach. It could be somewhere along Muizenberg, because the beach is long and flat with dunes in the distance, and far in the background it looks like the Hottentots-Holland. The man in the picture is speaking to his children, and in the bottom of the painting, written in big letters in the sand, it says: 'Honour Thy Father and Mother'. When I look at that painting, I sometimes wonder why only the father is there.

Frikkie phones back and says he can come over, but he has to go back on Sunday morning, because they're going for lunch with his grandmother in Stellenbosch. His mother said he can come to my place, but he had to promise not to behave like a hooligan like last time he was

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here. Last time Frikkie stayed over was when it was my birthday party. Then he got into trouble for breaking leaves off Mum's aloes and then rubbing the aloe juice in Zelda Kemp's mouth. Zelda was still crying when Mrs Delport came to fetch him a while later, and on Monday Frikkie told me that his father had given him the most terrible hiding.

Dad never gives us hidings. He says if you raise a child properly, it won't ever be necessary to lift your hand against that child. But Use got a hiding once. It happened when I was still too small to remember, but I think Use must have been about seven. One day, a Bantu came to our house to see Dad. He came by train and Dad took him into the study, where they spoke behind the closed door. At some stage, Dad had to fetch something from the car. Because Bantus are so scarce in the Cape, Use took the chance to have a closer look at the one in the study. We're mainly used to Coloureds, because they're the only ones allowed to work here legally. When Bantus come here to work, the police send them away because they try and take everything over. It's the same with the Coolies in the Free State. The Coolies aren't even allowed to stay over for one night, because once they sit, they stay sitting. The coolies were only brought from India to chop sugar-cane, but now they've taken over the whole of Durban. Bantus mostly live in Natal, the Free State and the Transvaal.

So Use wanted to check out the strange visitor. She stuck her head into the study, and before he knew what was coming, she said: 'You ugly black kaffir!'

She was about to run off when she bumped slap-bang into Dad, who had heard what she said to the Bantu. Use says that Dad picked her up by her arm and carried her straight to our bathroom, and he gave her the one and only hiding of her life. Then he took her back to the study and

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forced her to apologise to the Bantu for calling him a kaf-fir. We aren't allowed to use words like 'kaffir' or 'hotnot' or "houtkop\ because they're also human, and Dad says we should treat them like human beings.

Frikkie says the word 'kaffir' means 4 spit', and Gloria always says that kaffirs are the scum of the earth. Once, when Frikkie told her that she was half-kaffir herself, she just laughed and said: 4 No way, Jose! There's lots of milk in this coffee!'

I never tell Dad or Mum about Frikkie and Gloria saying 'kaffir', for fear I might not be allowed to go and play there any more.

When other kids at school speak about the hidings they get at home, no one wants to believe that I've never had one. They expect that because Dad's a general and looks so strict, he should give me hidings. But Frikkie knows Dad doesn't hit me, because he's seen and heard how Dad speaks to us when we've been up to something. When Dad's angry, the little muscle in his cheek starts jumping and then he only has to say something once and I know I'd better listen.

Frikkie is more afraid of Dad than of anyone else. Even more than he is of Brolloks, the woodwork teacher. Everyone says that Brolloks' father was the overseer who murdered the head mistress of Jan Van Riebeeck. Many years back, the school overseer murdered the head mistress and hanged her body from a beam in the art class. They say he got hold of her between the woodwork room and the art class, and then he strangled her with a skipping rope. Then he used the rope to hang her from the beam. The Coloured cleaners say that at night her ghost still appears along the passage that leads to the art class. Especially when the Southeaster blows, or when there's mist pushing down Table Mountain and a heavy fog

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hanging over Table Bay. The Coloureds that have seen her say she just stands there in silence, listening to the foghorn across the bay, and waiting for the overseer.

Everyone says that Brolloks has come back to do penance for his father's sins. But Frikkie says Brolloks looks more like a murderer himself than someone who's meant to be doing penance. Brolloks gives the boys terrible hidings, specially if there's any sawdust under the workbench at the end of the period. Woodwork period is also the only time Frikkie is ever quiet at school. Once, when I told Dad that, he said it was because there weren't any girls in the woodwork class for Frikkie to show off to.

When we play at his house in Oranjezicht, it's as though Frikkie and I are naughtier than when we're here in St James. If we didn't live right by the sea, I think we would spend more time in Oranjezicht. Another reason we mostly spend weekends here is because Mum doesn't want me becoming a permanent fixture at the Delports. With Dad so often off on army business, I have to be home at the weekends to see him. So if Frikkie and I want to spend the weekend together, he has to come here - even though he's so scared of Dad.

I meet Frikkie down at the St James station. He's brought his bicycle along, because we sometimes take our Choppers and go for rides to Simonstown, or we go swimming at the Boulders.

After we've dropped off his bike and bag at home, we walk down Main Road to Kalk Bay. We want to see what catch the boats bring in. It's a good time for snoek and Mum asked us to look for a nice one. I was hoping we'd braai some snoek for the General tonight, but Mum said there's not enough time, and anyway, we're having a braai

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tomorrow night. At first I began nagging Mum to let us have the braai tonight, because Frikkie and I wanted to make a fire, but Mum said it's impossible on Friday evenings when Dad's not here and I'd better make sure the snoek is in the kitchen before she and Use get back from the piano lesson.

Mum usually buys fish from Jan Bandjies who catches off Simonstown. But the catches have been good lately, so Jan hasn't been all that regular. Whenever the catch is good, the fishermen don't have to struggle by selling the fish one by one, because they can sell it all in one go to a shop or a factory.

Where you pass underneath the train-tracks on to the beach, close to the Kalk Bay subway, we hear someone calling: 4 Hi, Marnus! Hi, Frikkie!'

It's Zelda Kemp who comes trotting towards us. The Kemps' house is just below the council flats where the fishermen live. Zelda is two years younger than us, and her father is the foreman at the Simonstown fish factory, and she goes to school at Paul Greyling in Fish Hoek. Mum feels sorry for her because the Kemps are so poor. Mum says it's a tragedy that such a cute little girl doesn't have much of a future. Her parents won't ever have the money to give her a decent education. So, a few times a year, Mum takes some of Use's old clothes and sends Doreen to deliver the parcel to the Kemps for Zelda.

'It's a disgrace that such a lovely child has to live in that scummy area, right next to the Coloureds,' Mum said one Sunday as we drove past Zelda and her redheaded brothers waiting for the train to take them to church. The Kemps are also in our congregation.

Like always when you see Zelda, her long red plaits are tied at the ends with blue bobbles and she's wearing her hat. She even wears the hat on weekdays, not like Mum

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and Use who only wear hats to church. ZelaVs wearing one of Use's old dresses again today. It's much too big for her and it keeps slipping off one shoulder.

'It's that Zelda!' says Frikkie. 'Let's run away from her!' And we jump down the stairs and run beneath the tracks, on to the beach. Zelda calls after us, but we ignore her and run across the beach, along the wall, and back around on to the quay. We stop to look back and see her coming across the beach on the other side of the yachts. She's running like mad to catch up, and Use's dress is flapping around her legs like a plastic bag, and her plaits are streaming out behind her in the wind. While she runs she pins the hat down on her head with one hand.

We run along the quay towards the lighthouse on the point. The tide seems very high today, and some of the bigger waves are breaking right over it, and there aren't any fishermen with handlines either.

'What does it help, we're stuck in a deadend here?' I pant at Frikkie, once we come to a standstill against the little lighthouse. My chest is burning from the run. The waves are bursting up against the quay, sending spray across the surface.

'When she gets here,' says Frikkie, gasping for breath, 'we make as if we're going to throw her in. That'll frighten the living daylights out of her!' And we burst out laughing.

Zelda's head appears at the bottom end of the quay. She's carrying the hat in her hand now. She's still running, but she comes to a sudden standstill and retreats a few paces when a big wave sends a sheet of spray across the quay. When the water subsides, she looks at the two of us up against the lighthouse, laughing at her. Then she walks quickly up the stairs, until she's a few paces away from us.

She's out of breath and her cheeks have turned red against her white skin. Zelda's brothers all have big brown

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freckles across their faces, but her skin is as white as paper.