The Innocence of Roast Chicken Read online

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I whispered to Michael.

  ‘Ja,’ he said, nonchalantly flicking at a small stone with his big toe. ‘There’s nothing to see here anyway.’

  We ran, flying side by side across the rough ground. We were running to get away, to shake the fear from our stomachs in the hair-flattening breeze. We didn’t talk about it – we never did in our family – but I could see the tension in his face, in the intensity of his headlong rush.

  Movement in the distance, made distinct by the speed of our dash, turned us at last. We veered across the tufted ground, homing for the comfort of familiar figures. We ran, slowing into the balm of familiarity caused by two boys, digging rhythmically at a shallow depression in the ground.

  They didn’t look up as we approached, William’s son and Albert’s son, digging together in the shared harmony of their low-voiced chant.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Hello, Johannes. Didn’t you recognise me the other day, across the fence? I was with my older brother, Neil.’

  Sweating, intent faces still fixed themselves on their spades’ harsh stabs at the entrails of the earth – the small trailing roots, sticks and dangling severed worms.

  ‘Don’t you remember us, Johannes? You used to have pictures taken with us on Christmas Day in your new clothes … with the other children … when you were still on Ouma’s farm …?’

  ‘What do you want, Missie!’ William’s son stopped digging, his scowl glistening as he leant his bare arms and heaving chest over the spade’s handle.

  ‘Just to say hello.’ Michael had wandered off and I could see him now, winging his arms at shoulder height as he soared, twisted and wheeled away. I could hear his guttural mewing attempt at an eagle’s cry.

  ‘Is that hard, digging like that?’ There was no reply as the violence of rhythmic thuds continued. Beaten and diminished by the fury of their blows, the ground rolled over and surrendered its inner contents.

  ‘It looks hard to me. You don’t mind it too much, do you? You must be strong to do it so easily. Ouma says hard work makes us strong. She says God likes us to work hard and keep busy.’

  ‘Ja, your ouma,’ said William’s son. ‘She has a lot to say, but she’s never dug a rubbish-place.’

  I giggled at the outrageousness of the conjured picture. ‘But she’s a lady.’

  The digging continued, the two dark heads runnelled by silvery rivulets. I watched them in silence, sitting in the dust in front of them. I traced my name in the dirt with my finger and wiped it away with the blade of my hand.

  ‘You know, it isn’t fair if you blame Ouma for selling the farm. They had to, and she says it’s hard for her too.’ The silence dragged itself out. I would have to go on. I was agonisingly trying to draw a response from the harsh-faced young men, to force them to tell me everything was OK. I didn’t want to feel bad about them any more. I was exhausted by the guilt and the sorrowing sympathy. I wanted them to feel OK, at peace with God whose plan this surely was. And I wanted them to exonerate me and my family.

  ‘She feels sorry for Johannes’s being beaten, but she says he must’ve done something to make him cross. She says you’ll be OK with the new Master if you just work hard and stay away from troublemakers. She says new farmers have new ways …’

  I was silenced by the virulent abruptness of Johannes’s frozen stare and the stillness of his spade. So impervious had he seemed, I had begun to talk around him as if he were not there at all, as if he couldn’t hear me.

  ‘New ways, new ways!’ He turned and spat in the dirt. ‘These are not new ways. These are old ways – the ways of the past that must die. These are the old ways of dealing with the kaffir.’

  He flung the word at me. I had never heard it used in the city, and to hear it now, used with such boiling hatred …

  On my haunches, I cringed from his loud, spit-whitened mouth, appalled by what I’d created with my chatter. Silly chatter. I burned with the awfulness of how silly and how childish I’d been in the face of this adult torment. For the first time I felt inside me the shallowness of my whole life, my knowledge and my little emotions. From the depths of his dark anguish I could smell the rank nearness of rage and hatred.

  ‘These old ways …’ His voice was quieter now but I shuffled my body away from him, clutching my knees in a convulsive foetal position. ‘… They should die. They are good for nothing but to die.’

  I wanted to get away from this talk of death and ugliness. I wanted to get away from these fearful men that I’d thought of as boys. Farm boys who carried the warmth and comfort of home. The eternal carriers of children with burning feet, the lifters of small girls stuck on chicken hoks. I ran, desperately ignoring the paper thorns which clung to my feet, my breath sobbing as I cut across the diminishing grassland towards the dusty figure that was Michael.

  At first, the sounds of wind and my own sobs camouflaged the outraged screams over my head. I ran, my throat aching with dry sobs, until I was halted by the sudden whizzing power of a ‘dart’ brushing past my hair. I ducked, screaming as a second object sped lower, cutting so close to my ear that I felt it brush my flesh.

  Hysterical with choked screams, I flung myself to the ground, futilely covering my head with my arms. By now I could hear the bleak screech of the birds above me. I knew what I’d done. I’d unwittingly thudded too near the nest of a pair of kiewietjies and now they would dive-bomb me. They would continue their attack until I left them alone. But what could I do? I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t even stand.

  I scraped my face across the ground to peer under my arm for Michael. He was crouched, his arms flung over his head, and he wasn’t even looking at me. I moved my face over to peep under my other arm. Johannes was digging, impaling the ground with his spade. William’s son had stopped, shading his eyes with one hand, the other still holding his spade. He took a step, then stopped and gave a desultory dig, watching me.

  The dive-bombing continued, so close I could imagine the rocketing weight of impact. I shrieked in panic as I felt the rough brush of feathers, the rush of passing air. And then he came, William’s son, dropping his spade and running, ducking and weaving as he moved within range of the kiewietjies. He threw himself on me. I squeezed my eyes closed as I felt myself lifted, my cheek pressed roughly against his sweat-filled shirt.

  When he put me down the screech of the birds was distant. Michael was running wildly, skirting the territory they guarded with such fury.

  My face was wet and gravelly, smeared with snot, tears and dust. I could see the damp brown imprint of it on John’s shirt.

  ‘Thanks,’ I gasped, finding breathing difficult in the struggle to control my sobs.

  ‘Leave us alone now, Missie. We have work to do. Go home. You have no business here.’

  He turned and strode away, leaving me to wait for Michael.

  When he finally reached me his eyes were huge and he was out of breath. ‘You OK, Kitty?’ he said, with the baby nickname he’d given me and seldom used now that he was almost grown.

  The silence of our sudden closeness was shattered by cackles of raucous laughter. We both turned, our faces still stiff with shock. Two children were dragging a go-cart from the direction of the pondoks. Both barefoot, both dressed in khaki shorts and shirts, one was ragged, one starched. One was black, the other white. The white boy’s hair was beige stubble front to back, side to side.

  They pointed and cackled, slapping their knees and imitating my cowering before the kiewietjies. Slowly my shaking transformed from fear to fury. How dare they laugh at me. How dare they. Let them just try and stay calm being dive-bombed by kiewietjies.

  ‘Ignore them,’ said Michael. ‘What does he know, bladdy plaasjapie. And that piccanin’s got a bladdy cheek to laugh at us. Let’s go. We’ll get them back later.’

  Elaborately hiding and crouching, we tracked the two boys. They chattered a m
ixture of Xhosa and Afrikaans, dragging their pram-wheeled go-cart towards the slope near the pigsty and the square buildings. They didn’t look behind them.

  ‘Come, we’ll get them back for laughing. Let’s spy on them,’ said Michael, leading me to the back of what I thought of as the dairy. Almost touching it was the second whitewashed shed. Michael stood between the two buildings, offering his laced hands as a stirrup. He hoisted me up the walls and I clambered to the flat roof by straddling the gap between the side-by-side buildings and sliding my feet up the two walls. Michael followed, his hands and feet prehensile as he scaled the wall with the ease and deftness of a monkey.

  Flattened on the corrugated iron, we spied on them in the heat of mid-morning. It was exciting and shivery at first, to be there and hidden, watching their every move. But then we tired of it, endless racketing down the hill in the go-cart, taking turns to ride and drag it back up again past the pigsty. Our foreheads dripped and the roof began to burn our carelessly moved limbs.

  Michael leapt to his feet and stood upright, in plain sight. I watched him for a moment, and then joined him as he began his chant.

  ‘Afrikaner vrot banana, Afrikaner vrot banana.’

  My anger at the boy’s laughter and contempt at his khaki clothes and bristled haircut erupted into a screeched chorus with Michael.

  ‘Afrikaner vrot banana, Afrikaner vrot banana.’

  We felt the slammed shudder of the door beneath us. Instantly silenced by the fury of the red-faced bulk glaring up at us, I saw before us the farmer’s huge paunched body rippling in terrifying strength and size.

  ‘Wat doen julle op my dak?’ His voice crashed over us. ‘Weg met julle. Weg met julle voor ek my sjambok gaan kry. Get off my roof,’ he repeated in English, ‘or I’ll be taking the sjambok to you.’

  We scrambled in panic down the back wall, leaping the last few feet, falling and tumbling together in the dust. We ran then, vaulting over the fence and racing for the safety of our own farmyard. A small trickle of blood wormed down my thigh as I swung my legs.

  We stopped at last in our yard. Suspended in anticlimax, we started to kick small stones to each other. We were giggling shakily as our toes sought and flicked the stones. Neither of us spoke, but we were both still scared.

  ‘What d’you want to do now?’ Michael asked, gazing at the ground. We both knew that we had to calm down before we returned to the house. That we were too shaken to show ourselves or they’d have the story out of us and a truly awful punishment would follow.

  ‘D’you want to go watch the “teenager” chickens?’ I asked him. ‘They’re really funny. Especially if you feed them.’

  We stood at the barrel hok, laughing at the frenetic flapping of the half-grown chickens.

  ‘Watch here,’ I said, showing off now in my knowledge of these ‘teenager’ fowls. Michael almost never took an interest in the chickens unless they were having their heads chopped off.

  I pulled a handful of dried mealies from a sack leaning against the cage and threw it into the hok. In a splutter of flapping wings the chickens erupted, sweeping to and fro in greedy waves. In frantic pecking frenzy, they crowded and crushed against each other, flapping and squawking. We laughed.

  ‘Throw some more,’ said Michael.

  I didn’t actually see it happen, but I saw the bright speck of blood colour the foot of the speckled black-and-white. The chickens had been pecking wildly at the ground and one of them must have pecked his foot. It didn’t look too serious though, just a small cut.

  And then, to my horror, I saw another chicken peck at him, then another, then another till his feet were oozing and slimy with blood. They turned on his wings, his back and his head. Scrambling from the crush, the black-and-white ran from the mob to the edge of the hok. A surging wave of chickens followed, turned and swept after him as he fled back to the other end. They were hunting him down, maddened by the sight of blood. I screamed as they crushed him, pecking relentlessly at his sinking head and pulpy eye socket.

  Trapped on the outside, I forced myself through the nausea to watch the carnage I had caused. I had let go my control of the farm. I had promised myself that I would hold things together. But I’d been showing off and I’d let go. This time I had done it myself. I had killed him.

  When the chickens finally gave up, the black-and-white was a bloody heap, leaking a red stream towards us across the concrete floor.

  1966 … Eight days to Christmas

  Rivulets of watermelon juice raced around the mound of my belly and collided. Already stippled with water from my wet hair, my naked stomach ran with small streams, pinkish in the recessed light of morning.

  It was early. Early enough to catch the phantom cleaners at work with their silent dusters. Early enough for just the glowing expectation of sun, setting each leaf of the wild fig darkly against the sky. The chickens clamoured and crowed and the generator rubbed and grated against the still-warming air.

  Carelessly dried from our early swim my father dripped, dabbing his nose on the towel slung around his neck. He was squatting flat-footed, I echoing his position, on the lawn in front of the stoep. Through the window I could hear Ouma’s radio tuned to the Afrikaans station.

  Dad sliced through the reddened flesh of the melon with the precision of a flourished scimitar. His blade split the circle in two and he handed, in silence, another piece into my reaching hand. The sticky sliding of a pip made its way slowly down my chest.

  We were joined at last by the boys, wet and shaggy as dogs, shaking themselves and showering us with droplets. In their chattering presence, they proclaimed the ordinariness of day, and scattered the last spirit-wisps of ephemeral early morning.

  Soon we’d be called in for porridge, hot and honeyed, on the starched cloth. We’d drink creamy-yellow milk and eat soft, sizzling eggs. I could smell the hungry waft of bacon through the open door.

  ‘Hell, Dad, you should have seen it, Dad. It was unbelievable. Those chickens just fought it like anything, Dad. Wow, it was incredible. They fought it into the ground.’

  Michael paused to slurp at his watermelon. Dad’s unperturbed knife strokes and absent smile compelled him to continue.

  ‘They even pecked its eyes, Dad. You should’ve seen the blood. Hey, Kati? There was stacks of blood. You tell him.’

  I was watching with revulsion the thin pinkish stream of juice wandering and dribbling from my thigh. I placed the half-eaten slice back on the sloshing tray which held the melon.

  ‘Had enough, Kati?’ My father was looking at me, ignoring the background beat of Michael’s ‘Dad? Dad? Da-ad?’

  ‘I’m just cold now, Daddy. I want to go get dressed.’

  I wanted to remove my heavy eyes from his view. Hiding the guilt in their downcast depths, I could feel it swimming upward, ready to leap into the open before them all.

  That was the worst of it, the guilt. The horror of that thin stream of blood had not been so much in the fact of a chicken’s death, which, of course, I told myself in mental flagellation, I knew to be the everyday forerunner of gravied wings and drumsticks. But I’d never been aware of it before, never considered the connection between clucking hok and carving knife. And at least that death would be dispassionate – a detached and impersonal execution.

  The horror of this death was in the greed and gratification of the hunt, of the maddened fever of following and the abrupt turning of like upon like and fellow upon fellow for some unfathomably small flaw. But even that wasn’t the worst. It was the guilt which nibbled at my consciousness, desperate to burst into the open. I pressed at it, feeling it and keeping it down. I feared that Michael would tell them it was my fault – that, in my showing off, I had destroyed a life. I didn’t know what they would say, how they would blame me. But I was so scared that they would turn on me, revulsion in their eyes.

  ‘OK, go’n get dressed,’ my father said. �
�I suppose I should’ve already told you to get out of your wet cossie. Your mother would say that little strip of wet material is terrible for the kidneys.’

  ‘Not to mention the possible piles,’ said Neil and they both laughed.

  I passed my parents’ bedroom where my mother sat in tableau on the bed, one knee drawn to her body as she carefully painted each toenail. Her hair was newly teased and puffed in the perfumed room.

  I could hear Ouma’s ‘Dankie Here, Amen’ as I passed into our room. Standing for a moment on the bed, I watched the belted grind of the generator in the yard. It was comforting in its repetitive familiarity – but suddenly threatening in its beckoning belt and the bared teeth of its unguarded machinery.

  That was the year, you see, in which I first noticed danger in the commonplace. When, for the first time, death seemed to reek from the livestock and hatred from my loved ones. When the certainty of the world unravelled, and when its familiar form turned slowly monstrous. But I had to carry on, to clutch at the sameness, to hold it all together.

  With a growing desperation I felt I had to do as I’d always done, enjoy what I’d always enjoyed and play as I’d always played. This was my reeling incantation to the omens.

  So I warmed my tummy with sweet Jungle Oats. I slurped at the glass of breakfast milk, dunked with home-made rusks and soetkoekies. And while sucking voluptuous crumbs from my fingers I sat with Michael, the last two to leave the table, while he retuned the transistor radio to Springbok. Dunking and sucking, we waited for ‘Deathie’. The programme Death Touched My Shoulder could always make us gril pleasurably and squeal deliriously from the sanctuary of the breakfast table.

  I was nibbling the crisped bacon rind from my mother’s plate when I heard the knocker on the door. We stopped eating, Michael and I, halted by the strangeness of the sound. I don’t think we’d ever heard it before. Visiting maids and boys from the District always came straight to the kitchen courtyard, calling to Dora or standing in the sun until noticed. Visiting family was always expected and was announced by echoing yoo-oohs and coo-ees.