The Innocence of Roast Chicken Read online

  ‘Ja, why not ask your boy Albert how they had to pull his son’s shirt off the cuts on his back when the blood from the beating had dried it on him?’

  ‘Your father has worked for me since he was a young man like you. But from no one will I take that tone of voice,’ said Ouma, her voice quiet. ‘And don’t try to change the subject either. It isn’t me that has beaten the boy.’

  She paused, and then continued: ‘You must do what you have to do. Why should you be different? There are five to come after you. Who must pay for them if you don’t work? Your poor father? Ag.’

  She took another breath, slowly expelling it. Her voice was louder now, and stronger.

  ‘You have already more education than is good for you. I don’t like the sound of you. You are starting to sound like those political natives up there in the Transvaal. But I won’t have that attitude on my farm. You will work or you will leave this District. There is no room for layabouts here, causing trouble among my boys. And you know very well, John, that I have always treated my boys well.’

  Her tone and her anger had shocked me into frightened stillness, clutched by my dark corner. But it was John’s eyes, turned momentarily in my direction, which brought the fear of a world crumbling, a haven violated. Unaccountably, in their cold, blank darkness, they brought the spectre of the Port Elizabeth dustboy into the gloomy room.

  From where I sat, I watched John turn and stride through the blinding sunlight, his worn shoes puffing dust.

  ‘Albert? Is jy ook daar?’ called Ouma, squinting into the darkness.

  ‘I am sorry to hear about your son,’ she said as Albert stepped out to stand beside William, his hat in his hands.

  ‘Ja, Miesies.’

  ‘I am sorry this new farmer has hard ways. It is not my way, as you know. But I’m sure he wouldn’t beat for nothing. You must tell your son to work hard and to curb his cheeky tongue. Aai …’ She sighed. ‘All these young people, so insolent to their Masters, so hard for their fathers to control. What is to be done with them?’

  ‘Ja, Miesies,’ said Albert again. It seemed he would stop there – I had never heard him say much more – but he spoke again: ‘It is hard for him to work for that Master. He is a good boy, Miesies, but … so much anger. His heart is filled with anger and that Master turns it to hatred.’

  ‘Anger and hatred will get him nowhere with that Master … Ag, magtig, Kati. Why do I always find you crept into some corner where you have no business? Come out of there now and we will go find those kittens. Kom, kind.’

  As I stepped from the darkness, the blaze of sudden sunlight began to smooth the goosebumps which the dank walls had brought to my arms and warm the chill which had unaccountably settled into my bones. Ouma let me stand, silent and shivering, in the sunlight, while her brisk movements and vigorous voice brought Michael racing around the side of the house. Stopping with braced legs, he slid forward on the dusty gravel, the ee-ee-ee-ee of a skidding racing car on his exultant lips. Still waiting for Ouma, I squatted on flat feet, fingering dust drawings into the ground and examining small stones. I couldn’t have said anything to Michael, even had I tried. I didn’t know what it was I had witnessed. And I could never have put into words my disquiet, or the reason for it.

  ‘Come now, you kids. Let us go.’

  I stood at the sound of Ouma’s voice and was instantly shuffled and bumped by the sloppy loping of the two dogs. Michael raced ahead in short bursts, his arms aeroplaning sideways, his mouth simulating a helicopter’s shook-shook-shook. I walked alongside Ouma, falling behind as her energetic stride lengthened. My arms were horizontal, one hand on each warm-flanked dog. Their pale tan flesh was loose, and it wrinkled comfortingly in the clutch of two small hands.

  Scattered prickly pears were spiked along the rain-rutted road that led to the shed where Ouma had seen the kittens, not far from the pig enclosure. So succulent and fleshy the fruit seemed, such a thirst-quenching green – but so harsh in the cruel thorns which could rip a T-shirt and tear the skin which ventured too near.

  Flitting to the ground on the very edge of my peripheral vision, I saw a flash of orange. Halting the dogs with a squeeze of their shoulder flesh, I stopped to watch the fearless orange of a majestic hoopoe bobbing its crowned head just two adult strides from my feet.

  ‘Ag, kind, don’t dawdle,’ called Ouma.

  With a flash of orange-black wings the bird fluttered away. Minutes later I could see its flittering landing just ahead of me – waiting for me, just behind Michael’s wild zigzag and Ouma’s firm stride. As I drew softly level, it fluttered up again and forward. Regal and triumphant, it led me along that farm road, a euphoric emblem of the farm in all its gentle sweetness.

  The wild buzzing and chirping of insects sang from the scattering of tall grass and stunted bushes on each side of the road. Disturbed hoppers tapped against my legs as I diverged from the road and thrashed through the grass to follow Ouma.

  The shed was tumbledown, its walls crumbling and cracked. Large stones held the flat, corrugated-iron roof in place. Loose and sagging on its hinges, the opening door grated on the concrete floor. Light from the doorway revealed the tableau in the spilt bag of sawdust. Three curled kittens, spotlit in the surrounding gloom of tools and piles of wood, lay coddled in the fragrant shavings.

  As Ouma stepped back to allow Michael and me inside, one pair of dazed, dreamy eyes turned gently upon us. Set in a pure white face, with a body whose white expanse was endearingly flawed by a yellowish patch, the eyes blinked in the light glowing around them. The three soft bundles rolled, tongues pink in yawning mouths – as silky as down, as the softest wisps plucked from farm chickens.

  Slowly, the sinuous kittens awoke into tentative, paw-stretched roistering. Long sensuous necks extended, already gawky in the awkwardness of growth. The eyes of the white kitten followed my hand’s longing reach.

  The tearing teeth and claws which ripped my small, rough hand into a bleeding gash were far from playful. My pain was momentarily blunted by horror and I stood unmoving, unable to shake the wild predator hanging from my hand. I heard yelling, but Ouma and Michael seemed very far from where I was caught in a sticky web of panic.

  I became aware that Michael, shock struck deep in his dark eyes, had clutched at the scruff of the animal’s neck and flung it from us. I heard myself whimpering as we backed away from this violence of coiled fur. Outside the door we stood, all three of us silent. The abhorrent transformation from soft, fluffy pet to primeval hunter had been too sudden. There was a horror to it, a dread in finding this savagery in the heart of tender warmth. And there was nothing soft about these kittens, reared in the comforting familiarity of my gentle farm. They were wild, totally wild, with the innate and unaware cruelty of the untamed.

  Michael’s face was white, his dark eyes and eyebrows vivid. Blood dripped from a long scratch on his arm. As numbed senses began to return, I reached instinctively for my wounded hand, finding it viscous and slippery. The sight of the blood was what caused the scream, the child’s desperate fear at the sight of her own mutilated flesh. I screamed and screamed, hearing my high-pitched fright momentarily silence the insects and soft-voiced doves.

  I was finally squeezed into calm by Ouma’s sensible arms.

  ‘Kom nou, kind. Toe maar. It’s OK. You’ve got a bit of a cut, but you’ll be all right. We’ll go back and bathe it.’

  Michael was sniffing now, ducking his head and lifting a straight arm to wipe his running nose on his T-shirt sleeve. His mouth was twisted and a single tear was smeared with the dust from his hand.

  ‘William?’ said Ouma, as she located a tissue in her sleeve and began to bind it around my hand. Glancing behind, I saw William and two of the other boys – bidden by my screams – all three breathing hard and glistening with sweat.

  ‘William, please deal with those little bliksems. We have too many cats on this farm. The
y’re a menace. Of course, it’s the fault of that great white tom. We should have shot him long ago.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I whispered. My voice rising, I pleaded: ‘Not him, Ouma, please. He’s special. Please don’t hurt him. It’s all my fault, it’ll all be my fault if you kill him. Don’t kill him because of me.’

  An unreadable message was signalled from Ouma’s eyes to William’s, which quickly flickered down again. Shuffling a greeting to Ouma, the three went on their way at an easy jog across the rough grass.

  ‘Toe maar, kind, we won’t discuss it again.’ Giving me a rough pat and a push, she set off, swishing through the grass towards the road.

  Michael and I were subdued, quietened by the enormity of our reactions, almost more than the wild kittens themselves. Brushing through the long-stalked grass and khakibos, Michael’s short pants were suddenly spiked with blackjacks. My world was returning to normality and, to hasten its ordinariness, I plucked a blackjack from his shorts and pricked the exposed neck below his school-short back-and-sides. In the relief of the everyday, we scrabbled and pushed with an intensity of giggling. Curling his foot around my legs, he tripped me on to the rough, spiky ground and sat on me. Plucking the top from a wild liquorice plant which waved above my head, he crushed its liquorice-smelling juice into my hair, my face and my mouth.

  Ouma ignored us, walking briskly ahead. She surveyed her farm as she walked, her hand shading her eyes, which were deeply wrinkled from years of squinting into the harsh sunlight. As we stumbled and tripped, giggling and squealing behind her, she halted, her attention riveted. We paused, suddenly still.

  She was staring at the area of uncleared bush to the side of us. Its entwined clutter of gnarled trees and shrubs clambered over a small rise to our left. Branches were bent in twisted tension, a repression of growth which permitted no straggling, no winsome tendrils.

  ‘What did you see, Ouma?’ I asked, insinuating my hand into her grip. ‘I saw something move. I wondered if it was a snake.’

  And then I saw, just a glimpse of what it was – that hard, withered shell and leathery skin, that gloomy ponderous crashing through all obstacles and pausing lugubriously to munch a leaf.

  ‘It’s a mountain tortoise!’ I shrieked, my bare feet moving towards the bush.

  ‘Watch for snakes,’ warned Ouma, but Michael and I were already ducking between branches and swinging over brush.

  The tortoise was not yet overly large and between us, we could lift it out and carry it towards the house.

  ‘Please could we keep it, Ouma?’ I called over my shoulder as we trotted ahead, moving our hands to avoid the stream of tortoise urine.

  ‘I suppose you could ask William to paint his name on his back. Put him on the lawn under the wild fig. On the other hand, I’ll kill him if he eats all my flowers.’

  But I could hear that she was smiling.

  1966 … The same day

  ‘Laat ons bid.’

  Oom Frans stood before the window, the sunlight harsh against the austere lines of his face. His voice raised, he lifted his clenched hands to his chest, his face almost angry with the intensity of his conviction. Beyond his upright length, I struggled for a glimpse of the garden’s vibrant profusion of flowers and the bulk of the fig tree. ‘Here, ons dank U …’

  He paused. I willed him to speak, to have done with this dark silent praying. But on and on his hesitation dragged, till it brought a smile and a just-held giggle to my lips. Glancing around at the quiet, prayerful family, my eyes were captured and held by the locked glare of my mother. Holding me there a minute, her eyes forced mine finally to drop and close.

  ‘Dank U dat ons as ’n familie weer bymekaar kan wees. Waar ons binnekort die geboortedag van U seun, Jesus Christus, sal vier …’

  He paused again, his voice having gently caressed and lengthened the name of Jesus. Through my swept-down eyelashes, I glimpsed Michael begin to kick his heels against the couch. My mother’s hand swooped from its clenched supplication to clutch at his knee, her fingernails digging into his flesh. Pain was instantly communicated by his face, but not a sound left his mouth.

  ‘… vra ons dat U liefde en vergewensgesindheid ook in ons alger se harte sal woon. Amen.’

  Amen, said Ouma. Amen, repeated Tant Anna and Tant Marie, whose light-blue bulk was pressed to my side. She smelt powdery, especially when her face – heavy with powder and covered in light hairs – drew close to mine. Small damp droplets had gathered now on her upper lip and a slight smell of sweat mingled with the sweet talc in the air about her.

  Clearing her throat, Ouma took Oom Frans’s place, her large black Bible held open in her two square hands. But with a glance at Michael and me, she smiled and moved to one side of the window, where our longing gazes instantly swooped. She read for a long time, while my eyes darted and flew to the dragonfly, which briefly hovered its greeting just outside the window. And to the praying mantis, betrayed by a tiny movement, on the green of the gently swaying curtain. I remember little of the chapters she read, except for those verses which wormed their way into my mind as signs, or omens, or messages from God. Call them what you will, I was always on the lookout for them – those little missives, intended just for me – to tell me that everything was good in my world, or to warn me of possible harm.

  ‘“… For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briars and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.

  ‘“Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother.”’

  In the stillness of my sudden disquiet, this warning from God beat in my chest. Its hammering was calmed only several unheard verses later, when He sent His orange-black reassurance fluttering past the window in the sudden glimpse of my hoopoe.

  ‘“… For behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.”’

  Ouma closed her eyes briefly and slowly closed the flaking leather of the large book.

  Years later, I searched the Book of Isaiah to find the words which had stayed with me. Those words which had lived in my churning thoughts as the final warning from God that He expected of me the goodness that would hold the baying, circling evil from my farm and my family. But the full force of His warning, I think, exploded in me only much later that holiday. At the time, with the family’s love centred on the chicken-laden table, I knew it only as a sign from God. I hadn’t yet fully recognised the omens in the little things. It was only later that I recognised how early the gathering awfulness had begun, and how clearly it signalled the closing in of the sinister forces.

  That day, the warmth of the vast, gravy-covered chicken simmered above the starched white cloth of the Sunday lunch table. But, encircling the table, it was there also in the eyes, the smiles, the soft laughter of conciliation and family affection.

  ‘Jy praat vlot Afrikaans,’ Oom Frans said, opening his eyes after I, as the youngest, had stumbled and raced through a short Afrikaans grace that my mother had once taught me.

  Oom Frans’s planed face softened into a surprisingly friendly smile. ‘But, in honour of our Engelse family – you are not included in that, Elaine …’ he added with a rumbling chuckle which gentled his sardonic nod towards my mother, ‘… we will now speak some English.’

  I felt my father’s pride across the table in his almost imperceptible nod of approval. My mother’s tensely-bitten lower lip and darting eyes relaxed slightly as the rites of the carving began. My Ouma stood, her strong arms bracing to lift the large bird to a small table alongside her. She never relinquished this duty and careful ceremony of the dinner table. Now she brushed an escaping white curl from her forehead to concentrate on the line of her slice.

  ‘You c
an’t trust the carving to an Engelsman.’ I was waiting for her to say it, and she, probably realising as much, fulfilled my small ritual expectation. Laughter, the uniting laughter of love and released family tension, poured around the room as Dora entered with a gravy boat. Placing the gravy shakily on the table, she fell into deferential silent laughter, and quivered from the room again.

  ‘No Engelsman would dare wrest that knife from your hand, my love,’ said Oupa with a soft smile. ‘We know how dangerous an Afrikaner vrou can be when thwarted or threatened, particularly when she’s holding a knife which looks as dangerous as that.’

  ‘Ag, Griet, is that our old card table you’re carving on?’ asked Tant Marie suddenly, her round, glistening face eager, bent to one side. Without waiting for a reply from Ouma – frowning in damp concentration at the chicken – she burst into boiling, excited speech. Her voice was startlingly high and childlike and, sometimes, the child that she had been and her status of cosseted youngest sibling broke free from the confines of her age and bulk.

  ‘Ag, weet jy, Kati, we used to play whist at that table – even on Sundays,’ she said with a bubbling giggle and a blushing bob of her head. I had heard this story so many times before, but I loved its certainty and its place in the family rites.

  ‘Ja, Tant Marie?’ I encouraged her.

  ‘It was my job as the youngest,’ she said, her hand stroking my fingers and her eyes seeking conspiratorial affinity in mine, ‘to watch for the Dominee. I had to sit on the window seat and watch the gate. As soon as I saw him,’ she giggled again, ‘I had to shout, and up they would jump.

  ‘Oh, that table would disappear so fast behind the couch and the cards would go under the cushions …’

  ‘Ja,’ interrupted Oom Frans, laughing with his entire shuddering body, ‘and by the time Mams was saying: “Môre, Dominee du Preez”, at the door, there would be everybody sitting silent in the lounge, their hands in their laps.’