The Innocence of Roast Chicken Read online

  But I had another life. Each morning at half past five my father would wake me by staring silently at my sleeping face. As the sun was rising in summer, we would be stepping on to the chilly sand in its warm early glow. The first shock of the water always gave way to the fresh cleansing of salt and the exultancy of being the first people in the world, or so it seemed, to squint over the gold sparkling water and imagine where the ships were going and what they were carrying. Tide-walkers, we would find treasures like false teeth or money, or more wonderfully, signs, boxes or bottles from faraway places, washed in from exotic ships. If we had time we would drive to the steep point of the aloe-stalked hill, where we would revel in the full sweep of the golden bay. Or to the harbour, where my father would talk to sailors and, just sometimes, we’d be invited onboard to look around. After that, how could the restrictions of school seem harsh?

  When school was over, there was adventure. Perched on opposite hilly points, our suburbs plunged, in their centre, down to the wild scrub bush of the Valley. With its small river and sheer rock cliffs plunging headlong, it spelled a questing excitement. On its rough forbidden paths we could dash through monkey ropes and gnarled, bandy bushes. We could bundu-bash through the adult-tall reeds along the river and shriek at the surprised tuk-tuk of the thrashing guinea fowl and the yell of the hidden hadeda. Mimicking the piercing ah-ah of the peacock, we would disturb them into flustered flapping and indignant cries.

  ‘Don’t ever, ever go into the Valley,’ we were told. I more forcefully than my brothers, who were boys and impervious to danger. ‘There are bush-dwellers down there.’

  It didn’t stop us from following the little-used paths from suburb to suburb to visit each other, or to go adventuring. But it added spice. We never saw a bush-dweller, yet the throat-tingling fear of possible watching eyes gave us the grillies. What they would do if they found two or three exploring little girls we never could imagine. But once, when we found a rough, abandoned bush dwelling, roofed with bendy saplings, we scrambled and ran, screaming deliciously and giggling, up the overgrown, nasturtium-strewn hillside to the safety of houses and streets.

  I remember the music my brothers played that year: ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Nowhere Man’ and ‘Yesterday’ played one after the other on our portable gramophone, with a clunk as each stacked record dropped into place. I, following the example of my mother – ‘But they scream so, and they look so nasty with all that long hair’ – hated The Beatles, to the noisy derision of my brothers. Sometimes one, sometimes both of them, when the elder could be shaken from the scornful superiority of his advanced years, would chase me and hold me down. One would tickle me till I wet my pants, while the other would hold my head to the thump of ‘Please Please Me’ on the wireless. I would scream futilely and hold my hands to my ears.

  My favourite seven-single was ‘Telstar’, which I played into scratchy submission. But my absolute best was kwela music, which my dad would play on his mouth organ before supper in the evenings, thumping his foot on the carpet. He had all the Spokes Mashiyane records, which my mom would never allow him to play. ‘All that African music is so repetitive, it drives me mad,’ she would say. But she never stopped him playing it on his mouth organ. He held it the wrong way round, the way he had taught himself as a child, away in the backveld.

  My most urgent memory of that year is Snowball Scratchkitten. ‘If you go to school without crying and moaning, your ouma says she’ll send you a kitten from the farm,’ my mother told me. Oh, the waiting for this kitten to arrive; the anticipation which plunged into despair each time I cried and was told the kitten wouldn’t be sent.

  But he came, a beautiful, clean, pure white piece of the farm, into which I could bury my face each day after school. I loved him and played with him but he was always that little bit wild, never quite tamed into easy domesticity.

  As the year drew to a close, with my first school exams and the smell of jasmine plunging my room into holiday anticipation, my excitement about Christmas on the farm grew. My friends couldn’t understand why I would look forward to spending summer holidays away from the beach – and I couldn’t explain to them. I didn’t have the words to tell them that I longed for the sights, smells and tastes of the farm: the smell of coal smoke, which to this day wrenches me unwillingly to an earlier place and time, the clustered clucking of the fowls, the taste of those unbelievably huge free-range chickens, roasted for us nearly every day, and the skree-bang of the fly-screen door. So I told them only of adventures to be had, of the huge reservoir and exciting grounds to explore.

  On the last day of school at the end of the year, we were all given free tickets to the circus, which had just arrived in town – or perhaps they were half-price discount vouchers, I can’t remember. On the school bus, the full load of excited little girls in their school gymslips and panama hats was cluttering with anticipation at the prospect. I, who would not be in town to see the circus, fantasised about giving the ticket away to a poor African child, who would weep with joy. As we stepped off the bus, I saw my opportunity.

  Parked in the street was the dust van, from which the dustboys loped, lithe and long-legged, into our gardens to empty our dustbins into the huge baskets they carried over their shoulders. We usually kept a slightly fearful distance between us as they were always running, leaping for the back of the van as it moved off. They never smiled or stopped to chat, as the nannies and garden boys did, with a ‘Hello, little missus’ and a respectful duck of the head. And they carried the tainted smell of the open garbage in which they had to ride.

  This time, one of the men had sat down briefly under the kaffirplums on the wide, grassy verge. He was cutting the front off his worn takkies with a penknife. ‘Here,’ I said, holding out the ticket. ‘Take your children to the circus.’ He stared at me with so little warmth in his eyes – with none of the indulgence I was used to from the Africans I knew at home and on the farm. Then he ran, without a word, for the van which had begun to move.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said one of my friends. ‘He was mad. Did you see? He was even cutting holes in his shoes.’ I felt humiliated and rejected but, even then, knew it wasn’t as simple as that.

  My end-of-year excitement and shivery joy were gone, and I didn’t quite understand why. Perhaps he didn’t speak any English, I thought. When I consulted my brothers, of course they crowed. They jeered at my childish gesture and said I was stupid for not knowing that Africans weren’t allowed to attend the circus.

  So I didn’t tell them about his shoes. But I held that memory in my head where it worried at me. Only years later did I manage to work out for myself what he was doing: he was cutting the fronts off his takkies to free his constantly running feet from their constraints. Too small, he had probably just discovered them in the rubbish. And his eyes – those blank, cold eyes – they followed me too. And afterwards I saw them as an omen. But of course, that’s just silly.

  That was the start of it, the holiday which caused everything in my life to change colour, smell and taste. But please remember, it was an aberration. That holiday, which imprisoned me in the glass of my adult reclusiveness, wasn’t what the farm was all about. So why couldn’t I have stopped it? Why couldn’t I have done something to prevent those inexorable events which moved us all into disaster and despair?

  1989 … 15th October

  We fought again last night. I with my glassy silence, he with the rage of a sudden hailstorm. As usual it was hope – or rather my lack of it – which started it.

  I married a patient man, comfortable in his large, warm security. I think it is only I who, constantly testing in my imperturbability, can drive him to the wild savagery of last night’s fury. And somehow I just can’t seem to stop myself. Safe in the secrecy of my glasshouse, I even feel a heart-twisting sense of satisfaction. It is my belief, you see, that human beings are inherently violent, cruel creatures. It amuses me, in my remoteness, to demonstrate this so gra
phically with the mildest person I’ve ever known.

  Oh yes, hope! I am incapable of it, you see. I see no point to it. No, I think I should be honest, now at least, and say that it’s more than that. It twines around my neck and chokes me. I can’t provide God – that rancorous Spirit who created Man in His own loathsome image – with that kind of weapon.

  I feel it a bitter cosmic joke that I, who am entirely without hope, should be doomed to live through a time that is so full of it. We’re at the end of 1989 and I am in my early thirties, married but childless – by choice. My choice, I should add. I live in one of Johannesburg’s nice suburbs, dark with tree-shaded old houses. The village, as the suburb and small cluster of shops are referred to in that twee northern-suburbs style, is populated by young executives. So new age they are, in their identical polo shirts and baby backpacks, and their wives, with clothes carefully chosen so as not to betray their affluence. The older residents, those brown-skirted women with short grey hair – their cracked heels pressed to flat leather – ride their bicycles or walk their Labradors, retrievers or collies, and behave with public and uncompromising liberalism.

  But now has begun a time of a great sparkling euphoria, delicately balancing on the very verge of change. For most of those charming executive families, negotiated happiness and non-racial heaven seem tantalisingly close as they stop to chat outside the Spar shop. Some of them now daringly sport ANC T-shirts, still illegal but, of course, carrying little danger of arrest in these days of hope and glory. And those same grey-headed dog walkers, who have always voted Prog (even when it became the Democratic Party), discuss whether to join the ANC when it is unbanned – ‘it’s inevitable any day now, my dear’ – or whether to stick with the Progs from loyalty. That great shining unbanning feels imminent. And I know that after today, I will have to suffer even more ‘any day now’ conversations with earnest, glowing faces.

  Today, as no one could have missed, after a full week of ‘jubilant crowd’ stories in the newspapers, is the release date of the eight jailed heroes of the struggle. All this week the ‘jubilant crowds’ have been busy, it seems: jubilant crowds marching, jubilant crowds singing, jubilant crowds dancing … that’s what caused the latest storm in the tranquillity of our marriage teacup.

  My husband is desperate for us to form a little jubilant crowd.

  He’s finally been overtaken by the general euphoric hysteria. It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere! Right in the middle of our supper last night, he burst forth. Should there be a rally in Johannesburg to toyi-toyi a welcome to the leaders, he said in all seriousness; he thought we ought to go. Apparently, the word around – if you’re in the right circles of course – is that a rally is likely within the next couple of weeks.

  I gave him my look – I’m very good at it now – half mystification, half amusement.

  ‘What is your case?’ It erupted from him as if it had been waiting there all the time, hovering in the wings behind his tongue.

  I remained silent. I’m expert at it at this stage of my life. It’s probably the only thing I have truly perfected. His hands were shaking and he’d thrown down his fork. I could see the gravy dripping in great brown globs on to the table. It was his idea to eat at our beautiful yellowwood dining-room table every night. Years before, he had triumphantly ‘discovered’ it on a sortie through Graaff-Reinet and carried it exultantly home to the Transvaal on his roof-rack. I stared at his shaking hands and remembered how he had lovingly scraped the generations of paint from it and ruined his hands with paint stripper and steel wool. I carefully placed another forkful on my tongue and consciously savoured it. It was remarkably good actually, a roast chicken from Woolworths. It’s funny how so many moments of consequence in my life have been marked by roast chickens.

  ‘Can’t you, just once, respond to me? Can’t you shout or rage or tell me something about what you’re thinking? I just don’t think I can cope much longer with your fucking superior smile and your vacant expression.’

  That hurt, of course. I don’t mind the ‘superior’ bit. That’s what I’ve perfected so well. But vacant? I didn’t answer. I never do. Finishing absolutely the last grain of rice – that’s my curse from childhood, my inability to leave a speck of food on my plate – I pushed my delicate riempie chair back roughly to watch him wince. And then I spoke. I very often save my most cutting comment for the moment when I’m on my way out, a parting shot while I’m already retreating to safety.

  ‘It’s funny how the times we live in seem to have sucked the brains from all you former “bright young men”. Turned into empty-headed zombies, that’s what you are, with nothing left but faith, hope and glory and an idiot smile.’

  I thought he’d given up as I ran the bath in my favourite retreat – he stayed away so long. Our fights never last long. He batters against me with cold fury while my little glasshouse remains impervious. It is our unspoken code that when I return from my retreat in the bath, I speak as if nothing has occurred between us. And he, well, he recovers more slowly. But he never speaks of it again. What would be the point?

  But this time was different. He’s really got it bad, this hope thing. It’s even overflowing into our marriage. That makes me distinctly unsettled. I think we have a very workable marriage. I’m comfortable with it and I don’t like it messed with.

  I heard him knocking on the door but I had to turn off the taps before I could hear what he was saying.

  ‘What is it that causes you to be so bitter?’ I could hear the tears in his voice. There was a certain gratification – but also, if I’m to be honest now, a deep-down shame – in being able to bring him so quickly to tears, while I remained unmarked by those particular battle scars.

  ‘What on earth was it that made you feel so unworthy, that makes you hate yourself so much? Why do you always act as if you don’t deserve anything, not even a small bit of happiness?’

  ‘It must be a terrible burden to you to be a failed Psycho One.’

  ‘Fuck you, just fuck you!’

  Retreat at last. Did I feel a sense of triumph? I don’t know. I don’t think I ever feel much of anything. I lay and gazed at the soap dish, with its mushy soap lying in the small puddle of water which never seems to escape entirely. And the razor: that absolutely safe modern twin-blade razor.

  I think about suicide a lot. In a very abstract way of course – I wouldn’t like you to think me melodramatic. It’s just that I look at that razor and consider how impossible it would be to use. I think of all the sharp knives in the kitchen and imagine the strength one would need to force the blade through unyielding flesh. It’s all very theoretical. I could sink my head beneath the surface of the bath – the ultimate retreat – and take a long, last, considering breath. Merely contemplating all the ways there are to make myself disappear calms me. I don’t have to do it, but the option is always there. It makes it easier for me to face the next bout of life.

  I stepped silently, nearly invisibly, into the bedroom, pyjama’d and gowned. That’s my choice of sleep clothing. He likes to be naked in bed. Of course! It is only life’s most confident fools, its innocent dupes, who need so little in the way of defences.

  ‘You always make such a big deal of the fact that I failed one lousy year at varsity.’ He rolled, fully clothed still, on to his back to catch me. In the full glare of his very blue, spotlight eyes, I felt very visible, uncomfortably conspicuous.

  ‘But I’m not going to let you get to me any more. You may have got your lousy MA cum laude, but what do you expect? What else could you have done – you were nothing but a bloody swot who never said a word in tutorials, or moved from the library, for your entire university career.’

  I sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and looked down to avoid his riveting gaze.

  My hands were shaking.

  ‘And what have you done since then?’

  I shrugged. He knew I hated my job. He knew I was
incapable or unwilling to do anything about it.

  ‘Nothing. But what do any of us achieve, actually? A job is a job. Most people on earth are put here just to get through it. I’m not conceited enough to think I could actually have made a real mark on the world. And what’s the point of that, anyway? You still die, whatever you do, and people forget you.’

  ‘But at least I enjoy what I do and really believe in it, in its worth. I actually feel some satisfaction in doing the best I can for my clients and, believe it or not, I actually still believe in justice.’

  ‘Oh, my God. No one really believes that, do they? Not in real life. And certainly not in your snooty Wasp law firm. All they believe in is money.’

  ‘Shut up, I’m trying to get through to you here. Can’t you listen to me for once without sniping? Now things are finally happening in this country. And I’ve finally broken into labour work. With this union as a client, and consulting during this strike, I really think I’m, well, part of things, of the change that’s happening.’

  ‘So you’ve got your snotty Establishment firm’s token “public interest” client. You really feel like the white knight, don’t you? You really think you’re doing something – as if you play an important role. But you’re really nothing but a useful little tool. And if your stuck-up senior partners had given you management as your client, you would have been equally useful to them. Just don’t expect the workers to fall neatly into your naïve, liberal “noble savage” mould.’

  He sighed and rolled away from me, to gaze into the darkened garden. Our high white wall was just visible through the gloom, but the pool had already disappeared. The bronchitic gargle of the pool pump was very loud through the wide-flung summer windows, which welcomed in the drone and clatter of suicidal rose-beetles and the suffused sweetness of jasmine.