Tribe, p.6
Tribe, page 6
Even the devotion of his own daughter drifted away.
He had to see that nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. Then, drifting, floating, he landed on the comfort of being and nothingness. He learned that kindness is truth and truth is freedom. And when he was very sure and unencumbered, that was when the universe sent him a person.
Zac. Hannes wanted to hold Zac. Zac was over just being held. Zac wanted to have and to hold. Hannes was weary of being had; somewhere in his heart he feared that Zac had been sent to get him back, for Gail, for Jude, for Kit-Kat, for the cavalier way he’d treated the people he loved. So they struggled. Zac being the wilder, younger man who, ironically, craved unattainable commitment from the older man. Zac convinced himself that hidden away in a boxed silver Asprey frame lay the key to commitment from Hannes.
The truth did not soften Hannes. It set him free. He’d never thought of himself as a person living a lie; they all knew he outsourced. When Gail married him, she knew he didn’t believe in monogamy. In his way he had loved his life with Gail and their little daughter, Kit-Kat. But when Jude outed himself as an addict, it shook Hannes. He was convinced that if he’d outed Jude earlier, if he’d told Tselane and the others that he had done smack with Jude, then the OD wouldn’t have happened. His mantra became THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. He would pay his universal debt by living in truth.
He assumed they’d be going down this path together, carrying one another, but Tselane was doing the twelve steps with the mantras the AA taught her. The one she clung to with the most vehemence was AVOID YOUR TRIGGERS. For Tselane this meant the tribe. Jude must avoid his people.
Hannes had smoked his first joint with Jude. He did his first line with Jude, Benjy and Pierre. It was Jude who had introduced the heroin. They all gave it a whirl, and even though Jude had OD’d on heroin, it was in the high of E that they found home. Ecstasy, MDMA, those drugs were friends of the tribe. Tselane un-friended them accordingly.
Hannes was so sincere that he didn’t think about the other people involved. He just came out with it. “Gail, I’ve been fucking your friend’s husband Jeff for the last two years. At the farm, the stables, in the kitchen. I fuck Jeff all the time. To tell the truth, thanks to Jeff I’ve discovered I’m not bi, I’m gay. We need more honesty round here. If there’s anything you need to tell me, I’m ready to listen.”
Frankly, Gail had little desire to start “truthing” since her appalled mother now insisted she divorce Hannes and the convenience of the life they shared. As for poor Kit-Kat, she responded by not eating or spending time with her father. The eating disorder passed, but the estrangement from Hannes didn’t.
So Hannes found himself liberated and utterly alone.
Men are different to women. Afrikaans men, particularly, aren’t conditioned to reach out when in pain. They don’t cry or call on people, don’t moon about listening to sad songs. Hannes’s heart was broken. He woke up each morning to the aching loss of his family, but more importantly, the loss of his friends. Even his year in prison hadn’t been as bleak as this. That was when he moved to the land of his forefathers. Not the wine farm he grew up on, but the land his father used to disappear to when Hannes, Pierre and Ma were too close for comfort.
Hannes was happy there, at peace. Building a luxury lodge was Pierre’s idea. But no one could have predicted what Hannes would build. Hannes doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the star-studded guest book or the rooms. He’s impressed by the school they’ve built in the village and the increase in rhino births. The people who work on the farm live with their families, there are no Septembers – no one “goes home” for Christmas – and everyone shares in the earnings.
Since meeting Zac in London, he’s also had more contact with Katrina. Zac gets her. The stuff people don’t like about Katrina is the stuff Zac enjoys.
Hannes dials his young boyfriend’s number, but thinks again, realising that Zac will be partying no doubt. As will his daughter. This isn’t a conversation he wants to have over a cellphone to a person in a club in another country. Sometimes, sitting on the farm, he thinks about Katrina and Zac partying in London, and feels the tug of age.
He walks to the fridge, grabs a few beers and carries them out to the stoep where he sits on the stone steps. Stars are different in the bush, brighter. He downs the first beer, thinking, A reunion, jissis, that’s hectic. How will he keep Zac sober? And Katrina, will she come? She owes it to Jude, who is her godfather. Zac will bring her. But will Tselane bring Jude? He thinks back to the last time he saw Jude. It was in a hospital.
His frenetic thinking slows down as he reminds himself – this isn’t about me or what they’ll make of my lover. This is about Jude. And thinking of Jude softens his Afrikaner heart. Olivia knows how to do the right thing, like this, bringing them together. He’d never have thought to do that. At least he can offer the lodge.
Taking another beer, Hannes walks to the lake where he looks into the clear velvet night. At the beginning of their relationship Zac had said to him, “When Thomas Edison invented electricity he banished darkness from the world. Sometimes people need darkness to see the light.” It was corny. But now, in the darkness, he looks at the stars and hears himself humming the yellow song.
After a long while he goes inside and sends Zac a text: “REUNION. JUDE NOT WELL. COME SOONEST. LOVE U.”
There it is. He may as well try Katrina.
WORDS UNSPOKEN
KATRINA
Inside Katrina’s studded leather bag she has a pair of sewing scissors, an empty cigarette packet, black lipstick, and a bunch of wishes she’s forgotten. When the phone rings, the last voice she expects to hear is her father’s. It takes her a while to realise it’s him and to feign irritation. She’s already describing the lousy weather before she remembers she doesn’t like him, is too busy to talk and the phone call is an imposition on her time. Time that should be spent walking from a noisy club, through cold London streets, past a wall graffitied with two screaming men. What are they screaming about now? Is it the 99 per cent, Plight of the Palestinians, or do they want their own flat-screen TVs? It all amounts to the same primal scream!
“Wazzup, Hannes?” He sounds weary. Why does she need to be horrible to him?
“I’m not sure how to tell you this, there’s no camouflaging the truth. We’re having a reunion.”
She starts laughing, clearly at him.
“Katrina, listen to me. Your godfather, he had a bad suicide attempt.”
She sits down on the pavement. What’s with the language of delusion? No one “has” a suicide attempt; you make a suicide attempt. She looks up at the desolate branches of a tree. “So he’s fine, he’ll live to make another one?”
“Yes, Katrina, he’ll live. But he needs us, he’s coming here.”
A flake of dirty snow falls.
She fumbles in her bag, no fucking cigarettes. She goes for the lipstick, not sure if her hand is trembling from the cold or the news. “Needs who, Pa? Twelve years you haven’t spoken to him and he needs you. Who told you he needs you and why d’you believe it?”
She called him Pa. “Olivia said he needs us all and she’s getting everyone out to the farm for a reunion.”
“And Tselane is going to allow this? Tselane and the AA and the twelve steps and Arnold and the whole rehab programme because Olivia’s decided she wants a free holiday! Now that you’ve won the Condé Nast awards, Olivia can pull off a reunion!”
“These are our people. Olivia’s arranged it. Tselane wants to come, the professionals have agreed. And Jude is coming here. He needs his friends to love him back to life. And I’d like you to be here.”
Katrina feels the combination of deep fried fish, too much tequila and a night of dancing conspire inside her. “You might be naïve but I’m not buying it. I hate the farm and I’m not coming. When is this anyway?”
“I can’t say for sure. Whenever Jude’s healthy enough to travel.”
“Is Zac going?”
“I’m sure Zac will come.”
She puts a nail into her new tights and pulls, watching a ladder form from above the hem of her leather shorts down to the cuff of her boots. “Well, I can’t.”
Hannes suddenly becomes angry. “Jy sal kom,” he tells her. “As jy nie kom nie, dan kry jy niks by my nie! As ek sê jy kom, dan kom jy.”
They both know when he changes to Afrikaans that his brain has made a switch. No fucking around now. All the same neither of them acknowledges the change.
Katrina plays with the crocodile ring her father gave her for her eighteenth birthday. She’d rejected it at first, saying it was emotional blackmail, that he’d bought it to remind her of the farm. She touches the cognac-coloured diamonds covering the crocodile’s head, opens its jaw and smiles at the heart-shaped ruby inside its mouth. There’s no denying it’s cooler than the Cartier watches her friends were given.
“Good night, Hannes.”
“Goeie nag, Katrina.”
The rain is coming down hard now. “Fucking London,” Kat says, thinking longingly of home as she runs back to her flat.
Katrina never knew that she loved stillness, but then she’d be in a club, surrounded and packed in tight by friends, music so loud it was like a jackhammer pumping from within, and suddenly they would come to her. Those weeks spent in Clifton, recovering from a foray into anorexia, her mother watching from the apartment above, silently looking on, as she would a French art film with blurred subtitles. Unable to grasp her daughter ever again.
All the other apartments were locked up as winter began to curl its foreboding clutches over the beach. Just Katrina, a solitary figure balancing on precariously skinny legs, carrying a plastic bag. One day she’d collect garbage the ocean washed up on shore, old cigarette packets and broken glass. The next day she’d collect shells. Sometimes she found mermaids’ purses.
She watched the whales coming in and wondered to herself what the big deal was. They were like blobs wading about the sea. Cumbersome moving rocks. What was the difference between spotting a whale and a surfer? All the same, she made a wish each time she saw one, wished the sadness would leave. It enveloped her like a beautiful cloak. Later in life it would revisit with an intimacy, a familiarity, that would make her unsure whether it was an enemy or a friend.
Another thing she never knew was that she loved tea. Not until Hannes started up with Zac. Always assumed she’d turn out a tequila girl. But there it is; life surprises us.
She never knew that her father, an Afrikaans farm boy, would end up with a proper English lord. A rowdy, drunken lord. With a castle, and a butler who served tea. Tea for a gothic rebellious teen. Earl Grey served in antique china cups with thin rims and silver spoons.
She never knew she loved school. The odd Montessori school they sent her to back home during her childhood. Her pristine childhood in South Africa. When all was bohemian and happy, when wild roses grew over illicit behaviour and grapes hung like poetry through the summer.
She never knew she loved that hypocritical home with a grandmother in jodhpurs and riding boots pretending to be out in the colonies, while her son-in-law carried on with the gardener. She never knew that she felt safe sitting all alone at the look out, not a person for a thousand miles, just her and the odd predator striking past.
She never knew that she was only actually free under her father’s gaze, on his land, the land of her forefathers.
She never knew.
She never knew she was nostalgic.
Never knew she could long for anything, until it was all quite gone.
SEEING THE MIRACLES THROUGH THE FOG
BEN
Ben can’t remember when last Olivia woke up happy. He’s delighted when, instead of her usual sleeping face, he’s greeted by his wife’s green eyes sparkling with delight. Sitting up, arms outstretched, she summons the twins to her bed. “Africa, my boys, we’re going to Africa. What do you think of a thing like that?”
Seeking an explanation, Simon’s startled face darts from his brother Balthazar to his father. Typically Balthazar is gung-ho. Leaping onto the foot of the bed, something he’s forbidden to do, he calls out, “Africa, we’re off to conquer Africa!”
Their father is momentarily inaccessible as he struggles with a shoe that is obstinately rejecting his foot. Having successfully brawled both feet into his shoes, Ben grabs his wild child and, swinging him into the air, says, “Africa has been conquered, conquered, colonised and liberated for some time now. And you’ll find, my dear boy, that Africans do not much appreciate talk of being conquered. Particularly not from white English lads such as yourself.”
“But are we going there?” asks the bewildered Simon.
“I believe we are,” Ben laughs, leaning over the bed to kiss his beautiful wife.
“But when? It’s term time, we’ll be fined!” Simon says.
“All I can tell you is that if your mother says we’re going to Africa, then that is where we’re going. But first downstairs to breakfast.”
“Who’s taking us?” Simon asks.
“To Africa or to school?” Olivia laughs. She is all laughter.
“Both,” say the boys in unison.
“Tselane’s husband Jude hasn’t been well so we’re actually taking him on safari. It’ll be a bunch of people going to Africa. And school …” she glances at Ben who says, “Boys, Mum has to go straight from Pilates to the hospital. Alec will take you. Mum’s going to help Tselane out for a few days.”
The boys hug their mother. Balthazar kisses her, once on the nose, once on the mouth and once on either eye. Simon gives her Eskimo kisses, then, looking at her sternly, says, “Little Mother, how will you ever write another book if you don’t write another book?”
Hugging him, Olivia says, “My wise son, go to school so they can teach some of that wisdom out of you.”
Hugging their father, they walk out, adorably perfectly identical.
In spite of the gloomy weather, Olivia looks like an advert for a New Age vitamin. She hasn’t had such life since they were skiing in Antibes.
Ben, on the other hand, is apprehensive. Of course he’d like to go on safari. Seeing the others, well, that’s a dream he gave up on years ago. Olivia has an ability to grab the tail of life and fearlessly reel it in until suddenly, before she knows it, she’s consuming the entire animal. He gets baffled, overwhelmed. But here they are and, unbelievably, she’s got permission to see the others. Pierre, Hannes, Tselane and Jude. Permission to see Jude. But what will be left of Jude, of any of them? He looks out at his garden, the swing hanging from the old apple tree. Twice he nearly lost this garden; did any of them know that? Did they wonder about the years of infertility or his two brilliant boys? And Olivia – have they followed her career? Birdy conquering cancer, when all the doctors said she didn’t have a hope, and still she stands, like the Statue of Liberty, caring for the world’s tired, its poor huddled masses. Have the others had moments, looking out of windows, morosely wondering, “Does Benjy think about me?” He could have made an effort; at least with Pierre and Hannes, he should have tried. Hannes couldn’t have had it easy.
She’s talking about a week. How does Olivia pull this shit off? Sixteen years and he’s still not over the miracle of Olivia. What if he can’t do it? What if he’s forgotten how to be a friend? What he has with the other men at work, with the husbands of Olivia’s society friends, those aren’t friendships, they’re regular communications. Maybe Tselane gave him the boot because she knew he wouldn’t be helpful, not because he got wasted with Jude. Maybe he lacks compassion. And what if this is too serious? What if they get there and instead of getting better Jude gets worse? Then what? They’ll be stuck in the middle of the bush, surrounded by wild animals and no hospitals. The only doctor nearby will be the patient. That’ll be useful. Has Olivia considered this? No, because Olivia is governed by her heart; she gets an idea and everyone follows because she’s so beguiling and, besides, she’s always right.
He walks to the clothes horse and takes the tie she’s put out for him. It’s not one he would have chosen but it matches this shirt. She’s always right. He has to trust that.
He looks in the mirror in his cupboard, considerably less significant than hers, and knots the tie, muttering to himself, “It’s a risk, but she wouldn’t take it if she didn’t know. And I know I still know Jude. He could be maudlin, even as a child, and he did become an addict but he was always my mate. I know him, better than anyone else. I learned fencing with him, spent Christmas holidays with his family. Hannes, Pierre, me. We know him, know his soul.”
Winding floss from canine to incisor, he studies his face in the bathroom mirror. Not what it was twelve years ago, not the carefree youth who partied with Jude. Not quite so full of promise and glamour, but still a good man.
Thank God for Olivia and the boys. They give him a lightness of spirit. He suspects the others will have maintained their youth. Hannes in love with a young lord and owning one of the hippest hotels in the world. Pierre the surfer dude, nonchalantly enjoying his effortless success, married to a young, rich American. Tselane still a bohemian hippy, potting geraniums. And Jude, Jude the yogic psychiatrist, guided by Buddhist principles, the Hippocratic Oath, and rules of the AA. Ben envies this in a way; he’d also like a list, a code of conduct to guide him through moral dilemmas.
He walks out of the bathroom and stands at the top of the staircase to catch a last glimpse of his wife. Good God, she’s taking the old nappy bag, and inside it … he laughs, Birdy’s tartan thermos flask. Olivia and Birdy with the chicken soup. He watches her strap the bag onto the back of her bike and whizz down the road. He could stand like that for the rest of his life, watching Olivia’s enthusistic blonde head bobbing up Elgin Crescent, cycling towards him or away from him, doesn’t matter, just to watch her spirit, the golden blondeness of her. Knowing such life exists in the world is all he needs.
