The Rowing Lesson Read online

  But the beach is there, on the right, a tiny swathe of white sand edged with miraculous ferns, the giant yellowwoods gathering themselves in the background, a council of elders, larger-than-life witnesses. Morry and Bunny jump out and the boat lurches. You shout, I am the captain! but no one listens. And the girls are climbing out, falling out, Maisie looking back at you. She knows how you like to make a perfect landing, how you like to let the boat glide onto the sand, a whisper, not the crunch and growl these overgrown boys are making, as they haul the boat up onto the beach.

  Gertrude lifts her leg over the side of the gunwale. She sees you watching her and she gets stuck on the oarlock, the boat wobbling away from her. Bunny is in the water, his pants wet, and he lifts her up because he’s strong as an ox. She screams Eina! and he puts her down on the sand. Gertrude is sitting with her legs pressed tightly together, her hand in between her thighs, and she’s trying to make the best of it but there’s a dark stain on her dress and nobody knows what that’s from.

  Maisie is spreading an old tablecloth out, and unpacking the picnic and soon everybody is sitting down and eating their sandwiches. Morry and Bunny want to go further up the river, to where you can see the water seeping out of the mountain but you are worried about Wolfie’s boat. Morry starts walking up the river, his pants rolled up around his knees, a dent left in the tablecloth to mark where he was sitting. Maisie wants to go, and so does Hilda, and Bunny pulls them both up off the ground, as they hold their skirts. You raise those dark eyebrows at Maisie—what will Ma say when you lift up your dress?—but she’s in the water already and has knotted her dress to one side. Gertrude won’t budge and you stay with her.

  Maisie’s laugh is like bubbles, and the bubbles pop and fade as she and the others splash their way across their mossy rocks to the crack in the mountain where the water starts. You put your finger to your lips and yes, the monkeys are there after all, screaming and swearing at each other from the tops of the trees. Gertrude looks scared and you ask her if her leg hurts and she blushes. She uncrosses her ankles and then recrosses them and you see, you can’t help it, the dark vee of her dress caught between her legs. Can I have a look? Your words are out and up, caught like flies in the long strands of light-green moss hanging off the trees. She parts her legs, and oh God, it’s better than going up the river, because her inner thigh is the colour of milk, and there are scratches on it, like tiny red roads. You touch the raised red skin, and her thigh swivels in on itself, and your hand is almost trapped underneath her.

  It’s not bleeding, you whisper, but you can’t help noticing, out of the corner of your eye, the other place, which is seeping, seeping, like the river trickling between the rocks. Inside you there’s hot lava, something bursting and burning and climbing in your pants and now it’s your turn to knot your legs. There’s a spreading stain on the tablecloth and suddenly you give Gertrude a little push as you pull the tablecloth out from under her. The cloth shrieks as you rip it in two. You give Gertrude one piece which she stuffs under her dress and the other piece, with the blood stain like Passover wine, you ball up and toss into the bushes.

  Aaagg! Ghh! Aaagh! You both look up above the spotted trunks, above the frills of leaves, above the damp feathers of moss, and there are two Knysna loeries in the sun, mating. There’s a burst of laughter that you hold inside you, a flash of joy, but all you do is squeeze Gertrude’s hand so hard that she pulls it away. Come on! Look at those birds! You’re almost spitting you’re so excited. Their undersides are bright red and they’re flipping and swivelling in the light and they disappear and then they’re back again, with their swooping and grunting, like squealing pigs instead of birds.

  Morry and Bunny and Hilda and Maisie come tramping up the river towards you and the birds become black dots, then vanish. Aaggh! Aaag! Ghhh . . . ! You missed them. You missed the loeries. Ggggh! Gertrude is laughing and telling them Harold sounds just like the loeries. I promise you. Maisie’s dress is stuck to her and you notice her nipples flashing at you and she says Morry threw me in the water, won’t Ma be furious. Auntie Molly gave me this dress. Where’s the tablecloth? She asks you and you don’t answer. You just get into the boat and shout, All aboard! It’s your captain speaking.

  The clouds have come over and now the water is steel and the goosebumps go up on everyone’s arms. Maisie is still asking about the tablecloth and why does it matter. It was so old anyway. You know how your mother is, she says, and you do. The time she slammed her hand down on the table and squashed a hot potato. The time she threw a bell at you, and it knocked some paint off the wall. You ducked and she was mad as a snake. She embroidered that tablecloth and everything. It’s starting to rain and the raindrops are bouncing on the water and this is not good either. You’re rowing and this time your arms are very tired but you don’t want Morry or Bunny to row. No sir. Bunny can carry the girls in and out of the water as if it’s nothing. Morry plays rugby and one of his ears got bent and it stucks out like a hand. But you have to row and row and row. You could never carry Gertude like that. She’s bigger than you. And so is Hilda. Maisie is your size but then she’s your sister. How about that!

  The river widens and you slide back under the railway bridge, your oars pointing home. There’s the Serpentine, a little river off the main river, that will take you to a string of lakes: Island Lake, Langvlei and Rondevlei. It’s narrow and there are tall reeds on both banks as it meanders its way to Island Lake but you’re not going that way today, not with Bunny and Morry and Maisie and Hilda and Gertude in the boat, and the rain pelting down. You pass the thatched bungalows of the Fairy Knowe Hotel and the river bends again, and there’s another campsite, and Freesia’s Rock, a bent elbow jutting into the water. Each place has a story and you can remember your ma and dad fighting in a boat about something and the time you went springer fishing at midnight. There’s the boathouse that got flooded and the pylon that collapsed in the worst storm of the century so far. Maisie says, Harold, where’s the tablecloth? She’s mouthing the words at you in the rain, and you say, Remember the springers we didn’t catch?

  Maisie is shaking and Morry has given her his wet jacket and his big arm is draped on her shoulders like a log. This is trouble, you’re thinking, this and the blood on the tablecloth, the one with the cross-stitched basket. Ma, please don’t shout. Everything is special in your house, everything has roots and a place and when something gets lost there’s a giant aching hole no one can fill. They came from Lithuania, from London, your pa’s ma and your ma’s ma, and they had their Shabbat candle- sticks wrapped in sheets and even the fading silk robe you were circumsized in is wrapped in tissue paper and sits in a box in your mother’s cupboard. When you were five you took it out and tried to put it on and your ma saw you and she give you a bloody good hiding. She was holding it up to see if it was torn and there was a tiny brown spot which must have been your blood, but she didn’t see it or say anything. She folded it and put it away and that was that.

  One day your son will wear the robe at his bris, and his son, and your daughter’s boy but you don’t know this. It will be the colour of tea by then, and the world will have capsized and righted itself, but none of this is what you’re thinking as the wind blows and Gertude crawls into the little prow of Wolfie’s boat. Bunny and Morry are singing, Daar kom die AliBama to keep warm and Maisie’s teeth are chattering. It’s a summer day at the Wilderness which can be a sorry, damp story for anybody. You have been rained on during picnics, in your father’s cars as they climb over the hills, between here and George and yes, on the river, so many times on the river. Of course your ma will be nervous about you getting sick, about your lungs and your heart, not to mention your nose, which points East then South, and has its own shadow. And that’s another reason why you want to become a doctor. You want to stop the consumption from galloping, the fevers from burning, your rickety knees from knocking. For your ma’s sake. She worries and you can see all her fears written on the walls, invisible but burning.

/>   YOU ROW TOWARDS the wide mouth of the river, where it flows into the sea under another, bigger railway bridge which edges a small golf course. For a tickey, you and the boys dive for lost golf balls from the bridge. But today there’s no golf and no diving, and the little village is sodden and sleeping.

  You are scared when you open the creaking gate, when you walk down the path to the front door. Maisie is behind you, her dress still wet. You and Morry and Bunny and the other girls pulled the boat up onto the grass near the mouth of the Wilderness lagoon and Morry drove all of you the ten miles back to George. It was getting dark when Morry’s father’s car struggled over the hills above the sea, when you looked down at the black water of the Kaaimans River. Maisie kept talking about the bloody tablecloth and you wanted to hit her, almost as much as you wanted to put your hand on the scratches, the thin red lines on the inside of Gertrude’s thighs. Gertrude was sitting in front, next to Morry and you could see the outline of her breast in the dark, a small mountain right there, right inside the car, that you wanted to climb and hold and conquer. The sound of the crickets and the smell of sea, the bit of forest, then the lights of the small town pulling you into its center, along its quiet, dark streets right up to your parents’ house, next to the shop, on the corner of Meade Street and Hibernia Street.

  You pass the banks of hydrangeas, their pale heads drooping in the moonlight, and you can hear the crackling radio from inside the house, a pukka English voice slicing syllables the way Nettie chops tomatoes. It’s ridiculous, you say to no one in particular. Maisie whispers, What? You say, One of these days I’m going to be a doctor! Maisie laughs, one of those infectious engine laughs that can make you wet your pants. You don’t look like one, she says. You wait and see! You open the door and now the two of you are inside the house, peering into the lounge. Your mother, Yetta, has her trim ankles crossed and she’s wearing beige shoes pocked with holes. You know her dress has big pale flowers and she has an apron over it but you keep your eyes fixed on the holes in her shoes. Joe, your father, fiddles with the radio and then turns it off.

  The food is cold, your mother says, and she’s shaking with rage. You sit down at the table, opposite Maisie, and her nipples are poking fun at you. You stare at them and Maisie shifts, covering herself. Harold! Your mother is shrieking at you, and what’s in her hand? It’s not a potato or the dining bell. It must be what’s left of your little brother, Bertie, after she swallowed him whole and spit him out. Where did you take your sister? She’s screaming so loudly that her breasts are heaving like twin whales. She has something balled up in her hand. Oh God, it’s the tablecloth and you can see the streaks of blood from here. You are a dirty boy, the dirtiest little boy in the world. The nuns hit you and you tried to run away but they move very quickly in those big black skirts. They got you and took you home to your mother and she was so ashamed of you and so angry and now it’s happening again, except this time your shame and your longing and your own dreams are so big that they’re almost poking a hole right through your pants.

  We went to Ebb ’n Flow and it started to rain, you say. Sit down and eat! Your mother shrieks and the thing in her hand is a dish towel not the tablecloth and you’re immensely relieved.

  Your father says something about going back to the shop to lock up and your mother glares at him. Eat! You sit down and Bertie walks in, in his pajamas rubbing his eyes, and up he goes onto your mother’s lap. The food is cold. Your mother was right about that. Flat meat, and boiled cabbage and boiled potatoes. I’m surprised she didn’t boil the table and the chairs and the flypaper hanging from the ceiling, you’re thinking, as you pick up your knife and put it down again. I’m not hungry, you tell the beige shoes and they’re so angry you can almost see steam coming through the holes. Your plate lands on your lap, and then the bowl with the cabbage and there’s a tinkling and breaking and clattering as everything lands on the floor. Yes, she does have the tablecloth, but it’s still half on the table, one corner in her hand, and there are no baskets on this one. No sirree! Yetta! your father shouts, as if the Ice Age just ended and he stepped into the world. Maisie has one hand to her face, and there’s meat on her shoulder, a nice long piece, and suddenly you start to laugh. Your mother pulls the last piece of the tablecloth off the table. You can hear tinkling, the last plate breaking and an apple, a lonely apple, rolls across the floor.

  Look at you. You won’t eat. Your legs are like matchsticks and now this. Supper’s on the floor. We might as well decorate the lampshades with cabbage, have a potato fight, toss the meat up into the air and catch it on our heads. You’ve never ever wanted to eat in this house, with its brown walls and brown food and brown couch, browning like the onions always browning, browning on the stove. You like salty fish and fresh fruit and the delicacies that aren’t in the cupboard. They don’t go on the table when all your father’s trying to do is make sure you aren’t the boy in the class with bare feet and ringworm and every other kind of worm that eats into the heart of poor people.

  He’s a guter, a good man, your father is. Joseph Klein, the House for Value and Quality. General Merchant, Direct Importer and Showroom Specialists. Dealer in groceries, crockery, millinery, dress goods, boots, shoes, socks, stockings, headache powders. Everyone buys everything in his shop. Everyone loves Joe Klein. Nettie, who has worked in your house since the day you were born, always tells you how she and her husband, Isaac, sleep in the bed your father gave them when they got married. He gives extras, an extra bag of flour, two more eggs, a chocolate for the baby, smelling salts for ouma, to the customers who come into his shop sometimes to buy and sometimes just to stand and talk. A man is buying nails and he tells your father about his blind son and your father gives him a hammer too. Your father comes home and he’s tired and he sits low in his chair and you know what everyone says about him and you try to say something to him but he’s too, too tired. Your ma is never tired and she’s smacking things on the table and the clock is ticking and there’s something giddy and wrong in the house. When there’s a commercial traveller sleeping on the couch in the lounge, or your dad’s sister, Rose, sleeping over or your mother’s, Molly, then the house is a different place and there’s singing and laughing and you can eat what’s put in front of you without gagging.

  Tonight is not one of those nights. It’s just the five of you, Ma, Pa, Maisie, you and the bloody baby and now this. Food everywhere. Maisie is bending down and picking up potatoes and now it’s her bum that’s showing and of course you’re not going to miss looking at that. Joseph! Your ma is screaming again. Teach your son to be a gentleman! Your pa tries to give you a look but he’s also noticing Maisie and her wet dress and even Bertie walks over to her and looks up her skirt. Oh God. Your mother just stepped on something soft, some cabbage, and she slid right onto the floor. Your father says something no one can understand and it sounds like Rumpelstiltskin or Gorilla. Maisie giggles her engine giggle and winds up little Bertie and then it’s your dad’s turn and he’s laughing so much the tears are plonking onto his shoes and you see this and you think it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. No one wants to look at your ma but you know what? She’s laughing harder than anybody else. She’s so full of laughs and smiles that you half-expect the ceiling to fly open and confetti to come floating down on all of you, tiny bits of white and pink that cling to your hair and decorate the lampshades and the armchairs.

  There are good times and bad on Meade and Hibernia. Good moves into bad like fizzy drink up your nose. Smack, cough, choke. Bad slips into good like a monkey’s wedding when it’s raining and the sun comes out and the rain and the sunshine are caught together in surprise. Nettie is pulling open the curtains and it’s the morning of the next day. There is a long line of sun coming in through the window, a spear that pierces the heart of the brown house and it’s gold suddenly and you’ve floated into the life you’re going to live next year. Harry, she says, Mister Harry, holding up a ribbon of cabbage, Wat het gebuur? What happened? Nettie, Nett
ie, you say, and you want to sweep this fat, ebony-skinned woman with hair that’s almost white into your arms. You want to show her the latest dance moves, you want to dance with her to the moon and back. But you don’t. You do a little tap-tap and a shuffle and she claps for you. My God, Mister Harry, that’s fancy. Save it for Tweede Nuwejaar. You take the cabbage from Nettie, and twirl it around your finger. Just how sour is this kraut? You ask her and you’re Harold Lloyd, not Harold Klein and what was the point of becoming a doctor anyway?

  The radio is on and there’s cheering from jolly old England. It’s the Cup Final and Thomas Woodroffe, the commentator is saying, in his frosty voice, “If there’s a goal scored now, I’ll eat my hat!” Ssssh, you whisper to Nettie, the way you shushed the girls on the boat at Ebb ’n Flow so you could hear the monkeys. Sssh! It’s the closing minutes and Preston scores and yes, he’s going to eat his hat! The crowd is roaring and Woodroffe is chewing away! Maisie, you shout and she runs into the room. Woodroffe is eating his hat! Whoa! You spin her like a top and lift her and my god, those skinny arms are strong! MAISIE! She falls and you fall. You all fall down.

  Chapter 2

  WHAT ABOUT DIALYSIS? I ask the tall doctor with his white clogs and his silvering hair. Dr. Daniels looks straight through me and beyond, his eyes on the window behind me, framing Table Mountain, the Southeaster laying the tablecloth, a long expanse of cloud spreading and dissolving over the top of the mountain. The same wind has been blowing all night and it’s still blowing at seven o’clock this morning.