The Rowing Lesson Page 14
Simon is at the window now, watching the boats bobbing in the harbor, a plane in the far distance. I look at his curved back, brown hair touching his collar, and I’m remembering the model aeroplanes he built and hung from his ceiling, on translucent strands of nylon thread. The Spitfire next to the Hurricane, the Halifax tailing the Mosquito, another Spitfire slowly spinning by itself. Simon’s building a Meteor now, and he lets me watch him, his hands careful with the small parts, deliberate with the dabs of glue. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up, just like you. He’s going to be a good doctor, I think, as he glues the wing to the body.
A GOOD DOCTOR just like you. It’s years later and you can’t help it but damn it all, man, you’re proud of Mrs. Boshof ’s porphyria because you’re the one who finally diagnosed it, beating all those fancy specialists in Cape Town to the finish line. They thought it was her appendix, her brain, her stomach, her skin, her nerves, always her nerves. Come on, chaps. For crying out loud. I delivered all four of her babies. I know this woman has nerves of steel.
The term just ended and Simon’s on his way home from medical school, driving over the Du Toit’s Kloof pass. The Hurricane’s up on his ceiling clinking against the Spitfire in the breeze. Ma didn’t have the heart to take down his planes.
I’m thirteen going on fourteen, standing in the kitchen in our house in Worcester, smelling freshly ironed sheets, the hot cement of the back stoep, when Simon drives down the driveway, the branches of the loquat tree scraping the top of his car. Yesterday I heard muffled conversations on the phone, saw Ma’s face drawn tight at the corners. You slammed the front door, rattling bones.
Something’s wrong. The snuffling terrors are marching down the passage, a bestiary of two-footed, three-footed and even ten-footed creatures. Some of them are as old as I am, some are much younger but they all have names and faces, they all clamor for attention. Fear of the Terribly Black Dark stabs Little Fear of My Own Death who’s chasing Fear of Everyone’s Death who’s being led by the nose by Fear of the Powers That Be. Somewhere in the middle of the pack is Fear of Failing, desperately holding hands with Fear of Singing out of Tune, who looks like a bandicoot with a crooked snout. They can’t even march properly, which is Fear of Doing the Wrong Thing’s very worst fear.
When Simon slams the car door, they all fall silent, pressing themselves against the wall, not gone but flattened. He always had a way with them, his lopsided, rueful smile vastly shrinking their numbers, disarming the fiercest of the lot. When you’d lose your temper, screaming, I’ll give you something to cry about! Simon would show me how to stay still, watch the storm unfold and pass away. Let it wash over you like water off a duck’s back, he’d say.
I’m happy to see my big brother but he hardly notices me as he walks through the back door into the kitchen, empty handed. He gives me an odd little squeeze around the neck, his face turning away from me. He’s lost something that’s bigger than a suitcase or a record album or a bag of laundry. The snuffling terrors shake themselves off, start up a low cackle, talking amongst themselves. Simon’s presence does nothing to calm them down. I decide to stay in the kitchen, close to the ironing table where Maria, our Coloured maid, is ironing shirts and listening to stories on the radio. There’s always a serialized drama in Afrikaans every afternoon at around three, ruined farms and broken marriages, jealousy between the sisters-in-law, a stillborn child, a terrible car accident and endless, burning drought.
I can hear Ma summoning you on the office telephone system, prying you loose between patients. What follows is a film dismantled by the projector, one melting picture on the screen and then several long strips of celluloid alive and curling on the floor. There’s Simon, vanquished for the first time by the Snufflies, bawling his eyes out. You’re shouting at him so loudly that I stuff my fingers into my ears. Maria turns up the volume on the radio as two lovers are magnificently reunited in a whirlwind of stars and bells and Christmas music on Langebaan beach.
Johannes! Marietjie! The lovers swoon. In the next room, I hear seven different kinds of crying, yours, Ma’s, Simon’s, and four Snufflies who have shown up, just to make things worse—Fear of the Neighbours’ Hearing, Fear of the Maid Hearing, Fear of the Whole Town Hearing, and, worst of all, Fear of the Patients Knowing Everything.
It sounds like Simon failed first year, I whisper. And they won’t let him go on. Ag, shame, Maria says. Your daddy so wanted him to be a doctor, you know. Ja, I answer. Steam puffs out of the top of the iron, the smell of your lightly baked shirt searing my nostrils.
The sliding door between the kitchen and the dining room bulges, the grain of the wood suddenly grown large. How could you do this to me? How could you? The sentences are lassoes, cutting through the air and roping poor Simon. It sounds as if he’s sinking to his knees, the words driving a stake through his heart. I can see Fear of Failing stamping and cheering, dancing up a storm on top of the dining-room table. The word Bertie explodes like gunshot, and then there’s a loud crash, a broken dish, a flying chair, Stop It! Flung into the air, water from a twisting hosepipe.
I’m not going to ask Bertie! Your voice is pure black. Bertie’s a big shot nowadays, a fancy shmancy cardiologist on Chris Barnard’s team. He drives a Jaguar and he lives in a glass house in Camps Bay with a pool and twin girls my age, who like ballet and want to be models when they grow up.
Ma doesn’t know when to stop. Maybe Bertie. . . . FUCK BERTIE! The words burn right through the kitchen door. Jeez, there’s even a brownish stain on the white shirt Maria’s ironing. She quickly tosses the singed shirt into a basket under the table. Ag nee, man, she clucks, lightly tapping the underside of the iron with a moistened finger, steam hissing back at her.
When has Bertie done me any favors? When? This is different, Harry, Ma says. It’s for Simon. (The ill wind falters, then changes direction.) You didn’t tell me what was happening. You didn’t tell me he wasn’t swotting. I didn’t know, Harry. Of course you bloody well knew. You know everything! Now you’re going to tell me it’s all my fault. (Of course it’s all your fault.) Ma gives a long-suffering sigh. It’s all my fault. You’re paranoid, Stella. No—YOU’RE paranoid!
Stop! Simon’s cracking, broken voice rises up above the fray. Johannes is whispering into Marietjie’s ear, My liefling. Maria lifts her iron, anticipating the next kiss. My heart sits in my throat like a bullfrog. The phone burbles, breaking the spell. You answer it, clearing your throat first. Champing? you ask the receptionist, your code for Are they champing at the bit? Are the patients tired of waiting for the doctor? She’s supposed to answer Champing, or Not champing, doctor.
Instead, she connects you with Mrs. Boshof, and now you’re clearing your throat again, almost laughing. Wragtig, mevrou, you’re saying, followed by a stream of Afrikaans. She calls you Dr. God, this lady with the rare disease that you love so much and now you’re laughing out loud again, loving her name for you, and how you saved her and how all those doctors at Groote Schuur could learn a thing or two from you, a country doctor whittling wood all day long like a peasant. Because that’s what they think, don’t they? The whole damn lot of them including Bertie, too-fucking-big-for-his-boots Bertie, towering above you as if he’s going to take a piss on you.
Why don’t you ask First Prize? you ask Ma. Your bloody brother knows all the senior chaps at the medical school. He can help us. No! Simon bellows, a raw sound from deep in his chest. I don’t want to be a doctor anymore! He slams the French doors, almost breaking a pane or two. The next thing we hear is the revving of his car engine, the car backing up, turning, then heading down the driveway, the branches of the loquat tree scraping its roof, a final parting shot.
I help Maria fold a crisp white sheet as the church bells ring for Johannes and Marietjie. Here comes the bride, big, fat and wide. He’ll change his mind, Ma says. We’ll ask First Prize to put in a good word for him. How could he do this to us? Your voice is naked now, and I cover up my ears barely hearing you say, He’s bloody lucky to
have a father! Ma sighs, Here we go again. I’m squeezing my ears so hard that my head feels like it’s in a pulsing tunnel. Your words go up my nose. We were allowed to repeat in those days. It was different. He knew it was different!
Betsy, you ask me later that night, pouring yourself a glass of Cabernet, watching the deep red liquid swirl a third of the way from the top of the tulip-shaped glass. Do you know what they’re doing to District Six? I move the wine bottle away from you, and you grab my hand fiercely. Don’t, Ma admonishes, fixing me with a long, tight stare. I let go of the bottle, stretching my numb fingers. Simon’s absence yawns. The last and most fearsome of the Snufflies glimmers from the French doors, a blurry, tearswept figure I know as the Fear of Being Alone.
Do you know what the bloody bastards are doing? They’re tearing the heart out of Cape Town. My spidery fingers crawl across the tablecloth, closing around the base of the wine bottle, inching it away from you, Fear of My Father Drinking Too Much sitting on my shoulder like an engorged owl. Ma’s eyes are scorching, and she crosses her arms, tightening the mantle of disapproval around her shoulders. To the secretary, president and treasurer of the Worcester Teetotallers’ Society. . . . You lift your glass. Cheers! You haven’t noticed the basket of my white knuckles around your bottle of wine.
Constitution Street, Hanover Street, the fish market, the British Bioscope, it’s all gone now. They smashed it all to pieces. All those tumbledown double-storied houses with the broekie lace are gone, bulldozed right down to the ground. The skollies are gone, and the nonnies and the children and the old people and the fish-horn and the smells of curry and the sea, it’s all finished. Group Areas Act. Finished and klaar. Over and done with. Goodbye to Picadilly, goodbye to Butler Square. Remember Harrington Street? When I was a houseman, I once had a Malay patient who lived at number forty-five. Head-on collision. You shake your head from side to side, a lion with an earache. What a mess. Took us hours to stitch him up. His wife was sitting right next to him in the passenger seat. You shake your head again, remembering blood, glass, a dead woman’s lacerations. We had to tell him when he woke up.
You reach for the wine and this time my hand scuttles back into my lap. I’m not going to play games anymore. I promise. Ja, you turn and look straight through me, past me, out of the house and into the street, all the way across the railway bridge, through the Du Toit’s Kloof tunnel and over the mountain, all the way to Harrington Street and beyond. I am the tunnel, air quivering in front of you, a trick of the light, a phantom.
When you stand up, sniffing a plummy Pinotage from a second bottle, you give a little burp. I’m in my cups, Madam, you announce, the generality of the statement washing me backwards, into the sea with Ma. She’s settling down with the newspaper, a kind of house she builds for herself out of paper. It floats surprisingly well. She’s knee-deep in the section she calls Hatch, Match and Dispatch.
I’m in my cups, you tell us again, asking for a response. Ma crinkles the newspaper, Fear of Terrible Things Happening who likes to sit on the windowsill shrinks into his feathers.
Maxie’s dead. Best friend I ever had, you say to the wineglass. Dropped dead of a heart attack just like that. Don’t you think this wine has good legs, Betsy? You swirl the glass in front of me. Harry, Ma says, putting down the newspaper. You never heard from Maxie after you graduated. He sent letters, Stella, from Tristan da Cunha, the Bering Straits, Spitsbergen. Harry, they were postcards, once every ten years! I don’t care what you say, Stella. Those were the best years of my life, Stella. We were always laughing in my mother’s house! What years are you talking about, Harry? You’ve spent more years with me than you spent with your mother, with Maxie, with Gertrude, with Sonnie and Morry and Bunny and Wolfie and Maisie and the whole damn lot of them! That’s the whole point, Stella. Those years, I mean THOSE YEARS, George and the girls in the boat and medical school, Maisie before she got married, Dorothy May and Maxie and Mickey and the dancing, always dancing, those were the best years of my life. Even though we were poor, we had a lot of laughs. We danced in the moonlight at the Fairy Knowe Hotel. Hell’s teeth man, old man Dumbleton knew how to throw a party. And everybody would be there. I mean, everybody.
Your mother never stopped talking. She talked-talked-talked-talked. And what about your family, Mrs. Goddamn High-and-Mighty? Your crooked bloody . . . Harry! Don’t Harry me, I’ve had enough of you! You take another long sip from your wineglass.
Daddy! I pull the bottle away from you and suddenly your hands are on my chair, shaking me, shaking the chair, the whole room shaking. My head hits something wooden as I go down, my fingers grab at emptiness. The floor feels right, somehow, my natural place. Get up, Miss Teetotaller! Get up off the floor! When I stand up, you’re not much bigger than me, your eyes at my eye-level, burning black.
Get out, you whisper, a blast of wine-breath in my face. Both of you!
And then Ma’s voice coming from miles away. Betsy, look what you started. Are you happy now?
Chapter 12
“LAMBETH YOU’VE NEVER seen. . . . The sky ain’t blue, The grass ain’t green.” “When the lights go on again all over the world . . . and the boys are home again all over the world. . . .” Your blackout isn’t very black, Dr. Dad, if feet are still marching, all over the world. I can hear the planes flying low, I can see the bombs falling in the dark, and you’re in this very same hospital, learning how to fix a broken leg, pump out a poisoned stomach, drain the pus out of the train boy’s wrist. You’re peering in, and the ravines are slippery and red, and sometimes, in the hours and hours after your reason has slithered into the corner, you feel like you’re going to fall right in, that you’re going to die inside someone else’s dying body. There are so many of them here, dying fast and dying slow. And this isn’t even the real war. This is just Groote Schuur.
The brand-new building, with its red roofs and cream-coloured walls, cost nearly a million pounds to build. Within two months after it opened in 1938, all of its 628 beds were full. The six-storey main block has wards with twenty beds in them, as well as smaller rooms, with one bed, or two or three. It’s supposed to be divided symmetrically and equally into White and non-White sections with the same treatment for all but everyone knows how many non-White cases pour in, and how few beds there really are for them.
It’s right here that you’re learning the world of difference between the body preserved in formalin, and the body alive, surging with juices, glistening, beating, demanding every ounce of your attention. The yellow-grey flesh clinging to quiet bones is suddenly dressed in scarlet, black velvet, green, orange, puce, and nothing is still. The shop doesn’t close, everything keeps moving across the factory-floor, blood, salt, water, waste and a thousand chemical compounds sweeping from one complicated structure to the next.
You were just getting used to Grootouma, who taught you about the worm in the brain and the circle of Willis, the intricate bundle of tubes and wires right in the centre. She lay still while you entered the vestibule of her vagina, the brightest of bright lights burning overhead. She didn’t flinch when you cut into her, making a nice straight line between her anus and her vaginal orifice. Another chap got to make the midline incision from your transverse one, up towards the mons pubis.
It’s nothing like that when people are broken, sick or crying. They twitch beneath your scared hands, breathing, moving and smelling like fish or fowl going vrot, a different, fiercer smell than the dead sweetness of formaldehyde. The surgeons don’t even go near the children’s ward because of the terrible smell of infected burns and osteomyelitis. You’re learning how to clean burns with one nurse or two or four, and you holding the burnt child who dreads fire and now dreads you. It’s your own tiny wriggling body there, except this one is scraped and scrubbed, all the loose, burnt skin removed until the wound is raw and red, the brightest colour in the world. Charlotte was in a house on fire only she wasn’t a car. She was not much older than Bertie and got burned up to her eyebrows. You’re the one w
ho has to peel her skin back, and put on the gentian violet. She’s screaming and biting and you almost hit her, you’re so upset.
Then there’s Frikkie, one of the osteomyelitis boys, whose left femur got infected by the raging staphylococcus aureus, Marcus Aurelius riding through his blood and attacking the longest bone in his body. You were there when the surgeon exposed the bone, cleaned out the infected and dead areas, drained the pus, and said, We have to pray, gentlemen.
Another stinking flower in bloom all over the children’s ward is empyaema, pus filling up a body cavity, a lung, a gallbladder. Antjie has pleural empyaema and she struggles to breathe through the pool of pus in her chest. She cries all night for her mother, in between breaths. One of the giants, Professor Osgood from Scotland, will operate on her one windy morning, entering her chest to drain the pus, and she’ll die on the table, his hands still inside her.
There’s draining and mopping and cleaning into the organs, cutting the bad bone, treating infection after infection as they rain down on you like a thousand different insects. You wear your white coat like a lucky charm, a magical barrier of brightness that’s supposed to keep the germs out, and your soul in. It doesn’t always work and here and there a white coat gets TB and has to go home. Most of them come back, after long months of bed rest and artificial pneumothorax therapy. They’ve crossed to the other side, walked with the sick and helpless and now they’re wrapped in white again, almost inviolate. You hold your breath and tiptoe between the staphs and the streps and the syphs, listening to the senior chaps talking about the patients in Latin, writing prescriptions in Latin, because what you don’t know can’t kill you.
The profs whisper Luetic Disease, the Great Imitator, and you’re supposed to learn all the colours of syphilis— primary, secondary, latent and tertiary—as you follow the Greats on their ward rounds. A chancre in the genitals is usually the first clue and then comes the rash. In non-Whites the rash is black. In Whites, the spots are pinkish, pale red. But rashes are legion, and you have to have an eye for the right spot, the right blotch, on the right skin. Sometimes you look at your own wrist, your thigh, and the top of your arm, for the mark of syphilis, the Destroyer. The ghommas were beating for you too, my boy, and Koeka wasn’t quite white. But the spots aren’t there, nor are the lymph nodes involved. (You’ve checked those too, feeling carefully in your armpits for swelling.) Of course it was years ago but there are always the marks you might have forgotten, the fever you missed. You could be latent now, mere months away from General Paresis of the Insane.