The Innocence of Roast Chicken Read online

  We scampered to the Forest, I galloping sideways in the relief of feeling whole again, Michael careful not to spill the prickly pears. We left the succulent bowl there, on a water-cooled rock at the edge of the stream. We scrambled through the bush and out into the blast of heat on the open veld. And then to the fence, alongside the pigsty and the sheds. There was no one to be seen and shadows were scarce. The flies buzzed and irritated the nostrils and the edge of the eyes while we waited there, next to the silent sty of sleeping pigs.

  Ooh ooh ooh-we-ooh, ooh ooh ooh-we-ooh, whistled Michael into his cupped hands, imitating the call of a dove. It seemed not to carry in the dead air of the still afternoon, but then came an answering whistle from way behind the sheds.

  Ooh ooh ooh-we-ooh.

  And two khaki figures scrambled to the fence dragging a rough wooden go-cart, its wheels swiped from some old pram. Between the four of us, we pushed and heaved it over the fence and jogged with it to the steeply-sloped road beyond the swimming place.

  ‘I’ll just take my sister the first time. Show her how it’s done, OK?’ said Michael, and he sat behind me, holding the rope. His knees poked their skinny grazes on each side of me as the other two shoved the cart. It bounded forward, creaking and bouncing through the deep water-hewn ruts in the road. As we hit the steepest section we raced faster and faster, crackling and skidding on the packed earth, falling into dongas as deeply striated as those of a dried river bed, righting ourselves and careening fearsomely down the last section towards the flat. I was clutching the splintered sides, gasping in fear and elation, when Michael’s bare heels shot out and slid us to a slow halt at the bottom of the hill.

  And then it was Kobus’s turn, controlling the cart desperately through the deep, creaking ruts, his thin body bouncing into the air with bare, bent-up locust legs. He held it till just past the steepest section of the hill.

  I saw the wobble take the wheels in front and shudder through the cart. Unable to move, we watched the slow swerve which overtook it. For countless seconds, the cart swerved wildly on the steep, riven road before it crashed into the bank. Kobus flew head first from the cart, landing with a thump alongside an antheap.

  We ran down the hill to where he lay unmoving. My heart was pounding in my mouth in quick sobbing gasps as we reached the bottom. And then he moved, pulling his legs up to his stomach and kneeling, crouched over himself. He gave a small sound like a mew and then a groan, which might have been a sob. Winded, he was gasping for air.

  ‘You OK, Kobus?’ asked Michael, not sure whether he should touch him or not. He squatted down alongside him.

  Kobus gasped until he could take enough breath into his body. ‘Ja,’ he rasped, breathing intently. We watched each breath struggle to enter his body. ‘I’m OK now,’ he gulped at last. ‘I’m not a sissy. That often happens on these roads. The only thing is, I think the axle’s now bent a bit. I don’t think we can go any more today. Sorry, hey!’

  ‘Ag, shame, Kobus. Is it broken?’ I asked, relief filling me with billowing magnanimity.

  ‘Ag, my pa’ll help me fix it. But we can’t ride any more today. I just have to get my breath, OK?’

  ‘Ja, OK, Kobus.’ We sat with him in silence while his rasped breathing became easier and finally quieted.

  ‘So have you ever looked properly at these anthills? They’re quite lekker, you know,’ he said suddenly. Michael and I looked up at him from where we squatted flat-footed, pulling at the wild grass stalks. Jonas squatted a small distance away, leaning his back against the anthill.

  And so we stood as Kobus and Jonas showed us the busy nest of large black ants. With his pocket hunting knife, Kobus hacked at the top of their heap, exposing their myriad frenzy. I found I could catch them between my fingers and watch their leg-waving fight.

  ‘I’ve got a magnifying glass in my pocket, you know,’ said Michael. ‘Have you okes ever roasted these big ants? That’s what Kate ’n I do in PE. Wanna try? They taste kind of like salty.’

  We caught the large, substantial bodies between our fingers, placing each in turn on the dry packed earth. Covering the creature with the magnifying glass, we watched the cruel gleam in the sun bake it in seconds. Showing off slightly, Michael and I nibbled at the crisped salty bodies before offering our next cooked offerings to the other two boys.

  Jonas rubbed his teeth tentatively together on the very end of the bulbous abdomen. Then he spat, a great foaming glob, which wet the dry earth. Shaking his head with a screwed-up face he objected: ‘Uh uh, uh uh, uh uh.’

  ‘Ja dis lekker,’ said Kobus. Determined not to be outmanoeuvred in this showing-the-others-around contest, he added: ‘Nou ja, well let me now show you something else. You haven’t seen anything. Come, Jonas. Let’s show them what we do with the red ants. And watch it, those ants bite.’

  ‘Ja, we know,’ I said, blasé with my languid prior knowledge of red ants.

  We searched among the squat anthill towers for a nest of the small vicious red ants. ‘OK,’ Kobus called to Michael when Jonas located one. ‘Go stand by the black ants. And wait till I tell you.’

  I stood with Michael, waiting while Kobus hacked the top from the heap. ‘OK, now hold that piece of anthill fast. Now run across here with it as quick as you can.’

  The two boys raced past each other, Kobus howling and laughing as the red ants attacked his hands. Each dropped his piece of anthill on to the open nest of the other ants.

  ‘Hey Jeez, look at them fight,’ said Michael as we watched the pitched battle of black ants against the intruders who had dropped in on them suddenly from the sky. A vanguard of ants stood and fought. As they died, rows of warriors stepped in to replace those that fell.

  ‘Hey, Michael, look at this, it’s kif. Really, come round the back here.’

  Michael joined me at the back of the anthill, where a solid stream of nursemaid ants carried white eggs out of the rear entrance, while the warriors fought the intruders in front. After a while we swapped with the other two boys, watching the black ants battle for their home against their smaller, more vicious opponents.

  I can’t remember if we tired of them after a while, and I can’t remember the end of those battles, those fights to the death of the vastly outnumbered reluctant intruders. I remember only that, beaten finally by the afternoon heat, we trailed off to the Forest, where our cool prickly pears waited on the water-washed rock. I remember that we sat there, cross-legged on the flat stones, Jonas squatting on the path, while we swopped competitive snake stories.

  I had once felt a skaapsteker slither across my foot. ‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Kobus, beating my story with his own, of climbing a tree and coming face to face with a boomslang. Michael had a boy in his class in Port Elizabeth who had once been bitten while bundu-bashing in the Valley. His whole leg had swelled up and gone blue, he said.

  With the empty bowl, we wandered back to our farmhouse. Three of us stood in the yard, flicking stones at each other with our toes, while Michael ran into the kitchen with the bowl.

  ‘So what sh’we do then?’ asked Kobus when Michael returned. He had waited – wouldn’t have asked such a question of me, a girl.

  ‘Hello, children.’ I heard my mother’s call behind me and turned to see my father and her walking hand in hand towards us. ‘I’ve just been to see the new chicks. Cute, aren’t they, my darling?’

  ‘Ja, Ma, I saw them this morning,’ I answered.

  Kobus and Jonas were overcome with hanging-head confusion as my parents approached. Kobus’s blushing face gazed bobbingly at his tangling legs. My mother looked at him with faint amusement.

  She never allowed us to behave like that. At home she always told us: ‘There’s no such thing as shy. I won’t have my children behaving like rough farm children who’ve never seen people in their lives.’

  ‘So, little boys …’ Oh no, how could she call them ‘little’? I sh
rank with the embarrassment. I could see my mother had set out to torment them a little, poke at them for their quaint oddities, their veld ways. ‘… So are you all ready for Father Christmas? Have you written to him to tell him what you want?’

  ‘Ma-a-a,’ said Michael and I, but there was no deflecting her.

  ‘Shoosh, you two. Can’t I hold a discussion with your friends? Now then, what do you expect him to bring you?’ She could have spoken to Kobus in Afrikaans, but she was being her English self, her delicate, citified, thoroughly modern self. She wanted to show him and his like what she was now – not some Afrikaans plaasjapie.

  ‘Ma-a-a,’ said Michael. ‘People our age don’t believe in Father Christmas any more.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’

  Turning her quizzical gaze on Kobus, she said: ‘Well, I don’t know about your family, little boy, but in mine, children who don’t believe in Father Christmas don’t get presents. How about you, Kati? You believe.’

  I was torn. I did sort of half believe. Well, I had an idea Father Christmas was my dad, but I still wanted to believe. But I kept very quiet about it in public. I knew very well that, if I wanted to fit in with these big boys, I had to sneer at the very idea. But then, was she serious about the presents? Surely not. Anyway, I couldn’t stand up to the humiliation an admission would draw me into.

  ‘Ma-a-a,’ I mumbled, kicking at stones and squirming with my feet. ‘No one believes any more, Ma.’ I could hear that, even to myself, my voice sounded doubtful.

  ‘Well, I simply don’t know how you can expect presents then. And stand up straight. Don’t squirm about in that way. You’re not a farm child. You’re used to talking to adults. Look me straight in the eye when I talk to you.’

  Then, leaving us all hot with embarrassment, she smiled beneficently upon us and wandered into the house, crooking her arm through my father’s. We stared uncomfortably at our feet. Conversation had vanished.

  ‘Ja well, I think I better be going home,’ said Kobus.

  ‘Ja OK, you okes,’ muttered Michael. He was cross, and I could see he wanted them to go now. ‘See you after Christmas then. Bye.’

  ‘So you don’t really believe in Father Christmas?’ Michael asked me. He needed to vent his crossness, to spoil something, get his own back.

  ‘Naa,’ I said. ‘Well, not really. Do you really think he’s not real?’

  ‘I’ll show you he’s not real. Come!’

  And he led me into the house, tiptoeing down the passage to the large wood-scented cupboard in my parents’ bedroom. There he showed me the piles of odd-shaped gifts, brown-wrapped and Christmas-wrapped. I found I didn’t really mind so very much. It hadn’t spoilt the day. I didn’t count this. I really knew about him all the time, I think. It didn’t matter, God. You didn’t break your promise, God, it was still OK.

  Despite the slight disappointment, the size and shape of the gifts built a wavering excitement inside me. And we giggled, Michael and I, at the anticipation and the exhilaration of what we had done. We didn’t mind; it was Christmas tomorrow, and God was making everything right. He was the fixer, the healer. Tomorrow would be wonderful.

  In the evening after supper we sat on the cricket-singing stoep and sucked at cut slices of watermelon. Then my father, with his quiet smile, reached behind him for a large stick of biltong. He must have been hoarding it since we arrived. Without a word, he leant over to slide his penknife from his pocket and began to slice pieces off and throw one to each of us in turn. Michael and I gazed up at him hopefully, eagerly catching each small piece in our laps as it was thrown.

  Then we balanced on the stoep rail, not wanting to let go of Christmas Eve. Clinging to the bones of the day, picked clean of heat and dust. If only I could catch one more glimpse of Snowball’s father, that omen streak of white perfection. Then everything would be perfect for tomorrow. Christmas on the farm. It was my best thing in the world.

  It just had to be right.

  1989 … 15th December

  ‘The strike’s over.’

  ‘Jesus, you’re pissed, Joe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you pissed before.’

  ‘I said the strike’s over.’

  ‘I know. I heard it on the radio this afternoon.’

  Joe drops his bulk into the delicate reproduction across from me. His whole body sags like a dropped sack of sand. He gazes at me in silence while our impossibly young waitress, the one with the perky blonde ponytail, bobs eagerly across the crowded restaurant. She smiles at me, half in solidarity, half pityingly I think. Perhaps she thought I’d been stood up, all the time I was steadily making inroads into my Boschendal.

  ‘Hi there, my name’s Juliette. And I’m your waitress for the evening. Can I bring you something to drink, sir?’

  ‘Bring a whisky … any. Bells is fine.’

  Softly chiming music forms the background to the tinkling laughter of the very wealthy. Crystal glasses chink quietly against each other while blocks of ice and languidly held knives and forks clink discreetly. It’s a very expensive restaurant, but the food is orgasmic, as they say. Food is the one indulgence we’ve never stinted on. And, after all, we can afford it. We’ve no private schools, therapists and dancing classes to pay for.

  ‘Well, Joe, you’re fairly substantially late. Didn’t we agree on seven? Can I assume you’ve been celebrating the end of the strike? Or maybe drowning it out of your mind?’ To myself, I mutter: ‘Since you clearly are out of your mind, at this stage.’

  ‘Oh what the fuck! Fuck the strike. Fuck the workers. Fuck this godawful country.’

  The background music suddenly sounds very loud.

  ‘Oh very profound, Joe. Well done. But judging by the silence you’ve created in this terribly refined atmosphere, I think we’d better be leaving.’

  ‘Forget the whisky,’ I tell Juliette as I hand her my credit card. Her expression is now one of pure pity: my goodness, not only nearly stood up, but then joined by a drunken man. Just you wait, my girl, life will catch up with you one of these days.

  I drive Joe home after manhandling him into my car. But judiciously, so that he thinks he’s getting in himself and making his own decisions. Men are pathetic about being helped. His car will just have to take its chances in the parking lot until tomorrow. We’ll fetch it on the way home from our Saturday shopping expedition.

  Joe stumbles into the house, presses the TV ‘On’ switch and flops on the couch in the still-darkened room. He catches only the very last item – a light-hearted one – of the TV1 news. And it’s Friday, so it’s in Afrikaans. Joe mutters to himself, turns it off and drops his body back on the couch. His hands are over his face, scrubbing at it, so it’s a moment before I see that he’s weeping. But not Joe’s usual manly leaking at the eyes, with just the break in his voice betraying his emotions.

  Great heaving sobs tear at his huge body. He removes his hands suddenly, uncaring of whether I’m watching or not. His mouth looks painful, a broken gash in his smeared face.

  His utter despair frightens me.

  ‘Ag, come on, Joe.’ I sit beside him. I don’t know how to reach him. I have no practice at this. And how can anyone reach into a pit of such despair? I sit in silence, but for once it is, from my side anyway, a gentle silence.

  ‘Can’t you at least just tell me what it is you’re taking so hard? Is it the settlement agreement?’

  ‘It’s everything, Kate, everything about the strike, the violence, the settlement, everything.’

  ‘They said on 702 – I was listening in my car – they said the union accepted management’s original pre-strike offer. Is that what’s got to you?’

  ‘Ag, Kate …’ He sighs.

  It’s an effort for him to speak. I feel this great, welling panic filling me with the desperate need to keep him talking, to keep his soporific despair from pressing in around his head. I have to keep hi
m at it, to keep him facing it and talking about it, rather like keeping a person pacing the floor after they’ve swallowed a bottle of sleeping tablets.

  ‘What is it? Do you feel responsible? Is it the settlement that’s depressing you?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. I just …’ He sighs again, and then looks up. ‘It’s just that everyone behaved so appallingly. There was no side you could look at and say they had the moral upper hand or that they ended with right on their side. It was supposed to be a battle for justice … and both sides turned it into a ratfight.’

  ‘But you knew that already. You went through that when all the violence was going on.’

  ‘I know.’ He is silent so long I can see the choking clouds of his despair closing in on him again.

  ‘But? But what, Joe?’

  ‘Well, now it’s over. Eleven weeks of turmoil, of lost earnings, hungry children and struggling wives. Eleven weeks and fifteen – was it fifteen? Ja, I think so – fifteen people dead, and for what? What was it all for? They’re in exactly the position they would’ve been in if there’d never been a strike. If people had never been beaten up, necklaced or burnt in their homes by firebombs – people utterly removed from the strike, mind you. People who just happened to be the families of traders trying to make a living by selling boycotted goods.’

  ‘Joe …’ I struggle for something to say. I don’t usually express things, except to deride. I feel creaky inside, rusted over in the path from my brain to my aching throat. Before I can speak, Joe breaks in again.

  ‘And d’you think anyone cares? Is anyone mourning them and what happened in the name of workers’ rights? No, fuck it, both sides are strutting around claiming a victory.’

  His words are angry but he speaks them detachedly, one side of his mouth twisted upward in a parody of amusement. ‘Everyone’s rushing around pompously proclaiming their cleverness. No one cares, dammit, no one gives a sweet fuck.’