The Rowing Lesson Read online

  Your mother says no, that’s not what he would have wanted. And she’s probably right. All his organs have packed up, everything’s tired, worn out.

  Just last week Dr. Daniels told me you were a bit cuckoo. I was on the phone with him in New York City, and his gruffness took me by surprise. Your father’s a hard arse, he went on. He’s not OK in the top storey. If we bring the urea level to below forty, we won’t have the confusion, just the hard arse. Hey, if I put that amount of urea in your blood, you’d also go cuckoo.

  By the time I got here, you had stopped struggling. I miss the flailing you, grotesque as it was. At least you were alive then and not laid out flat in death’s waiting room, in an end-stage coma. His GFR should be 120 but it’s less than 12, Dr. Daniels tells me, his gaze flicking from the tablecloth to my swollen breasts, and then lower to my abdomen. I cross my arms.

  If we could only get it up to thirty or forty . . . he’s almost hopeful, as if the old chorrie has a chance of springing back to life again. I’m the one escaping now, staring out of the hospital window, at the curve of De Waal Drive below, wide canopied trees mantling the lower slopes of the mountain, an aching blue sky above. Yesterday I was in the air flying over Africa and now I’m here, in Groote Schuur’s intensive care unit, the same hospital where you learned how to become a doctor, where, in 1967 Chris Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant.

  Aloud I ask the doctor, Can he hear? We turn towards you, shrouded under white sheets, the automatic sphygmomanometer, the ECG machine, the intravenous drip and the catheter recording and monitoring your blood pressure, the rhythms of your heart, your fluids, both incoming and outgoing. I can’t look properly at your face yet so I look at your left arm lying outside the sheet. A small monkey’s hand, laced with dark hairs, scrubbed clean as always, the line for the IV taped to your wrist and forearm. I carefully look over the white hump of your body at your right hand, fingers and thumb peeking out from a cast. All I want to see you do, just one more time, is sit up and wash your hands, one palm slipping over the other, raising a froth of foam, hot water pouring down on them from the tap, washing all the germs away. But the hands don’t move.

  I don’t think so, Dr. Daniels shakes his head. If we did an EEG on him right now, the waves would be flat. No wind.

  He could be asleep, I say. (I drew you once, when you looked like this, face hewn from rock, beak of a nose jutting out then down, eyebrows magisterial, thick shock of silver-black hair, fast asleep in an orange-flowered armchair.)

  Last week he gave us a helluva time, Dr. Daniels says. He kept pulling out his tubes with his good hand and we had to tie him down. He was pointing at all these machines saying, This is a garage. I’m not a car. Take me to the hospital!

  He clears his throat. It’s better this way. He’s not fighting us anymore.

  Hot tears scald my eyelids. I blink, swallowing hard. He was a bloody good doctor, Dr. Daniels murmurs, his white clogs squeaking apologetically on the tiled floor. I turn to the wall, watching the ECG machine line-draw your heartbeat. Call me if you have any questions, he says. And then he’s gone, white coat flapping soundlessly down the corridor.

  I’m pregnant, I tell the bag of fluid hooked onto the IV stand, making sure I’m at least three feet away from you, keeping a wide berth now that we’re alone together. Sixteen weeks the obstetrician says. I almost didn’t come, you know. William didn’t want me to fly. I look at you out of the corner of my eye and I imagine I see your foot twitch, that there’s a light burning inside your head somewhere, changing the grey of your face to a soft pink.

  Remember what you said when you came to visit us the last time? When I took you up onto the roof of our loft?

  YOU CHAPS ARE in the crow’s nest!

  You weren’t listening to William telling you how he’d bought the loft for a song twenty years ago or when he told you that the street below was called Bond Street because of the bond traders and merchants who lived here before the factories came. You were staring at the lumps in the tar paper covering the roof, at the wooden water tower, and then finally you gazed out at the skyline. I’m in Manhattan, for Chrissake! Hell’s bells, man. That’s where the Jews used to live, and that’s the Bowery, and there’s Wall Street, for crying out loud.

  When William went downstairs, I pulled open the swollen door of my studio and took you inside. You barely noticed what I’d pinned up on the walls to show you, the very beginning of my series of extinct animals. You glanced quickly at the quagga, the bandicoot, the potoroo, the Great Auk, the rat kangaroo, the gelinote and the kaka. You didn’t even comment on the mess, dabs of paint everywhere—on the walls, tables, as well as my palette—postcards tacked everywhere, shelves piled high with shells, tiny animal skeletons, rusted old toys, my drawings stacked on the floor, canvases leaning against the walls. Where are the naked women? you asked me. Dad! I could hear the plaintive mix of shame and fury in my voice. Come on Betsy, you said. You’ve got to have the big match temperament! Trying to recover, I pointed to my favorite, the quagga, extinct cousin of the zebra with its striped head and neck, the rest of its body plain brown, a creature that lived right where you were born. You looked at it as if you were looking at a rival. But I thought you painted nudes, you repeated. As we left, the Great Auk looked at me with a beady eye and I wondered why I bothered with him, big lug of a bird lost more than a hundred years ago.

  Back on the roof, we were swept up into the buzzing, grunting, honking sounds from the streets below. I sat down on an upturned flowerpot, a relic of one of my failed experiments at roof gardening.

  You pulled up a broken beach chair and sat down right next to me, talking the hind-leg off a donkey about Freemasonry, and your lodge brothers, ma’s repugnance at the lodge dinners, the Royal Arch, and the Third Degree. Of course I’m not supposed to tell you, you said. It’s a secret. Those chaps take it too seriously, man. They don’t have a sense of humour. Your mother hates the whole thing. But she and the other girls cook for us, and they do a damn good job. When I became Master of the Lodge, we had a big dinner. All the chaps and their wives came. I made a toast. It was quite something, even though I say so myself. I brought the house down. I should have been an actor.

  You got up to look over the edge of the low parapet wall. Somebody’s going to have a terrible accident, you said, backing away. You know ever since my fall, my shoulder’s never been the same. Wragtig, that was something. I was at Tjoekie van der Merwe’s house, examining one of the kids who had chickenpox and I was just on my way out of the door. One minute I’m standing and the next minute I’m on my arse, twisted sideways, in their bloody conversation pit. I knew I’d fractured something. It hurt like hell. Your face was riven with melancholy, the hardest of memories. It’s hard when an old person falls, you sighed. Old bones take a long time to heal and they’re never the same again. Did you know I have Paget’s disease?

  What’s that? I said airily, staring at up at the empty sky.

  My spine is turning into bamboo, for Chrissake!

  Wait, you said, let me take a picture of you up here. You took your camera out of the old leather camera case around your neck. Stand over there, you told me. Not near the edge, for God’s sake! Your mother wants lots and lots of pictures. Damn it. There’s something wrong with the mechanism.

  Dad! I said, waving my hand in front of my face. You’re just like your mother. Impatient as hell. This camera is not as good as my old one. Hang on, chaps. Let’s get those towers in the background. They look like giant tuning forks!

  You caught me squinting, the sun in my eyes.

  Carefully you put the camera back into its case. I was so small they thought I’d never grow up, you went on, My legs were like matchsticks. I’ve survived a lot of those buggers. Half of them dropped dead on the golf course.

  The river was bad this year. I only went to Ebb ’n Flow once. It was too low to get very far. Hard to believe that we used to dive off the bridge at the mouth of the lagoon. Now you’d break
your bloody neck on all that sand. Remember that time you curled up in the front of the boat? That was one helluva storm. Your mother doesn’t go in the boat anymore. She never liked the water, not the way you did, or Simon. The last time he came from America, I took his girls up the river. They wore those headphones the whole time. What do you call them again?

  Walkmen.

  Betsy, don’t forget to remind me about the penicillin. Later that night, you remembered anyway, parting the giant curtain that separated our sleeping area from the rest of the loft, a big ziplock bag full of bottles and bottles of different antibiotics in your hands. Here take these. Call me in the morning.

  Dad! (I scrambled back into the jeans that I was pulling off.) I don’t want your pills. What? They’re not good enough for you? No, it’s not that, Dad. When I get sick, I try to boost my immune system. Your immune system? What bloody rubbish are you talking? What do you know about immune systems?

  You walked straight into the makeshift bathroom without knocking, straight into William who was thankfully just brushing his teeth. You handed him the bag full of pills. Compliments of the chef. Take in case of emergency. Wash down with a good Shiraz.

  William had thrown up two Sheetrock walls and a door at the back of the loft, an instant bedroom just for you. You spilled out of the little room, telling us stories, asking us to help you read a map of the city, your glasses perched on your nose, your dressing gown gaping open. Dad! You looked down and tightened the cloth belt. You’re a bloody Victorian, just like your grandmother, you scolded. William, did you know that my daughter used to be the president, secretary and treasurer of the Worcester Teetotallers’ Society?

  William’s answer was an unblinking stare over the top of the newspaper, levelled right at you. You as well! You said this with a sense of great injury. You buggers are against me, like all the rest of them. Your mother too! One day, when I’m dead you’ll be sorry. You folded your arms, chin thrust out, feet crossed at the ankles. You know how I want to go?

  I shot a look at William. This is an old one.

  I’m in my surgery and there’s a patient stretched out on the examination table. I go over, and I’m just about to put my stethoscope on his chest, when BOOM! Massive heart attack! I drop dead on the floor right next to him. No bloody hospital for me. No doctors, none of those clowns and cowboys you get these days. Jesus Christ man, they all specialize. The heart chappie doesn’t know where the abdomen is. The neurologists don’t go past the neck. Forget about the pathologists and the surgeons. They don’t know what a patient is! They’ve never been to his house, met his wife and kids, his mother-in-law, his dog— some of those dogs, man, they eat a Jew for breakfast every morning! But you know what I mean. In the old days, we used to do everything, from obstetrics to appendectomies. There weren’t all those bloody machines. You had to use the machine up here! You jab your finger at your head.

  The old chaps were expert clinicians. They knew how to take a history. They knew how to listen to a heartbeat. They weren’t painting by fucking numbers. You know what one of my patients calls me? A deaf Afrikaans woman whose five children I’ve delivered? Dokter God! (pointing that same jabbing finger up into the sky, making the sign for God.)

  Two nights before you left, I took you to see Guys and Dolls at the Martin Beck Theatre on Forty-fifth Street, in the dazzling heart of the city. I wore big earrings, a swingy black dress, my hair pulled back. You sat tilted forward on the edge of your seat as Nathan Lane and Faith Prince sang and danced the Damon Runyon stories of your youth. Bloody marvelous! you said, turning to me at intermission, the high beams of your enthusiasm shining right at me. I can’t believe I’m here, my girl. You did me a big favour. A wave of feeling spread across your features, black eyes softening, a rueful smile catching at me.

  Harry the Horse! Nicely-Nicely Johnson! Mindy’s Restaurant! Maxie knew pages and pages off-by-heart. Me and him and Mickey Levin used to go to . . . never mind. Before your time. Still, District Six was full of all kinds of characters. It’s all gone now. Those bastards bulldozed the life out of Cape Town. Your mother and I saw it coming. It was not long after the war when the Nationalists came into power and the signs went up, Blankes, Nie-Blankes. Well it’s all changing again. Who knows what’s going to happen. It’s bloody fascinating, though. I just hope I live long enough to see the verkramptes verkramped!

  The curtain lifted on the Second Act. The lights sparkled on your glasses. We leaned forward in unison, uncomfortably twinned. Later, over a prized Pinotage you brought all the way from South Africa in your hand-luggage, you made one of your toasts, to mine host and mine heir! To my youngest. You swirled the black-red wine, took a concentrated sip. To Betsy Klein. President, secretary and treasurer. . . .

  I waved my hands at you. Dad, please!

  Chaps, you know what Hannes Laubscher, the winemaker, said? This Pinotage isn’t for sissies. I’ve had it for five years now, sitting in my cellar, waiting for the right occasion. I don’t drink this kind of wine with everyone. You took a big sip, filling your mouth, your head tilted back slightly. It’s their first crop from some new plantings. William held his glass to the light. Lots of red fruit, he reported, after tasting it. Sleek body. Vanilla and prune on the finish.

  Bullshit, man, you told him, as you drained your glass. Here, have some more. Do you know what a Pinotage is made of? you barked at William. Well, it’s a blended wine, Pinot Noir and Cinsault, you told him, topping up his glass and yours.

  There are all kinds of wine drinkers, William. Those who like to talk, those who like to drink and then there are the chaps who make the wines. Those blokes are the ones you can trust. I’ve learned a lot, you know, even though I don’t trample the grapes myself. I hear it from the horse’s mouth, right from the farmers themselves when they come into my surgery complaining about their wives and their workers, when they sit there with chest pains and high blood pressure because it rained too much or too little.

  You know what makes Robertson special?

  (Robertson is a town, I muttered to William.)

  The southeaster in the summer, cooling off the vineyards in the late afternoon. Limestone soil. Where we are, the soil is mostly alluvial, with a little clay. Now they’re starting to plant up in the hills. Maybe we should open the Meerlust Rubicon, let it breathe a little. Hell’s teeth, man. Meerlust’s a place to see. Those buggers have been in business since 1693.

  William, I’d love to take you around, show you the Boland. You’ve got to meet the people, talk to them, seeing what’s going on. Never mind the politics. It’s the most beautiful place you’ll ever see. Betsy can tell you about the mountains, the Hex River Valley. You haven’t tasted a grape until you’ve had an Alphonse Lavalle, our Hanepoot, our Barlinkas. I had a patient once, in Sandhills. Farmed export grapes. We used to picnic near there. Betsy, remember the white, white sand and the little river with those smooth riverstones? Remember Ockert Pretorius? He was killed at a railroad crossing, train went right over his car. I loved that man.

  Tears started in your eyes. You cleared your throat. We could go to the Wilderness. I could take you up the river in my boat. Now that’s paradise. I’ve been going there every summer since I was a boy. Betsy can tell you. She and Simon used to climb up a tree with the other kids and grab hold of the rope and swing right into the middle of the river. Ssshwwwssh! Boomps! And then they would swim over and I’d pull them in. This is your captain speaking. Don’t rock like the boat like that or you’ll walk the plank. Remember the time we had eight in the boat and it sat so low in the water? Your mother doesn’t like the river. She can’t even swim. My wife comes from a long line of learned men, William. Chaps who thought they knew everything.

  You moved your shoulder, wincing. It’s never been the same since I broke it. Fell on my arse, I did. Rolled from the frying pan almost into the fire. Hey, I’m glad I gave those buggers a bloody big fright. I was screaming my head off. They should have put something up there. If it wasn’t me, it would have b
een somebody else. I was in the middle of telling them that God was punishing them for their stupid laws. That’s why it hasn’t rained for months and months. He’s trying to tell you something. One minute I’m up on my feet and the next minute I’m all twisted up.

  You know what I always tell them? Ek is ’n wit kaffir! That fixes them!

  I whispered “white nigger” in William’s ear and he looked from me to you, then back to me again, still swinging on the rope over the river, not sure where to let go.

  How many stories up did you say your restaurant was?You were looking out of the windows, staring at the sparkling towers, your body tilted forwards on the edge of the couch. My wife is afraid of heights, She’d never go up there, not in a million years. Did I tell you we went to the Waterfront for my birthday? One of those fancy new places. I could have stayed at home but your mother really wanted to go. There’s an aquarium near there. They have a plaster model of the coelacanth, the big fish they caught near East London, the one they thought had been extinct for millions of years. The chappie who found it kept his boat at one of the Knysna lakes. You can’t imagine how hot under the collar people got in those days. No one wanted to believe we were related to a bloody fish.

  In the morning, you were standing at the foot of my bed when I woke up, in your dressing gown and slippers. Dad! I shouted, pulling the covers over my head. Get out!

  I was just looking for the light switch, I heard you telling William, who was up and drinking his first cup of coffee. I can’t turn the lights on in the toilet.

  What the bloody hell is this? Bladderwrack? Milk thistle? You were shouting from the bathroom, reading the names of the vitamins and homeopathic remedies stacked on a shelf above the sink. Scullcap? Devil’s Claw? Nux Vomica? Belladonna? What’s this one over here? Elderwort? I’ll give you Elder Fucking Wort! Where are those antibiotics? BETSY!