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Translated from the original Afrikaans by Iolandi Pool
Human & Rousseau
For Madri
who was only born somewhere between pages 260 and 261
Sand
What should your earliest memory be? What do you remember as your very first scene? Is it you in the chicken run in Wellington? You are sitting on the ground among the chickens, your mouth is wide open, Grandfather is holding something out to you, a pebble or an earthworm, and you are planning on eating it – you eat everything. No, that’s the photo in Mother’s album, the family still laughs about it. Is it you swinging on the garden gate, a floppy hat on your head? That was during a visit to the Langkloof, at your cousin Magdel’s home. No, that’s another black-and-white photo from the album. Is it you and your blow-up dog, with all the boys from the children’s home in Riebeek East? No, another photo, examined a thousand times.
Is it perhaps the sound of rain on the roof? The roof was corrugated iron and rain was scarce and like music. Is it the rustle of leaves in the big tree in front of the house? You’ve just woken up on your patchwork quilt and are looking at the gigantic dark branches, crossing one another with sharp elbows, a maze in the sky, a mysterious space inhabited by tiny characters known only to you. It would be lovely if your story could begin like this.
Sand. That is what I remember. The smell of sand. Old sand. This sand has been trucked in from far away, a long, long time ago. It fills a sandpit, round and twice as big as a fishpond. The pit has a cement rim with bits of slate set into it, awkwardly and sloppily, a circle of dark-grey stains. This is my play area. I sit on the sand. In front of me are two fat little legs with dimpled knees. They lie straight, like a doll’s. I follow them to my torso. These are my legs. (He sits like the dead! Grandmother always said.) Yes, sitting was my thing. Long after my cousins of the same age were walking and talking, I still sat. (But when he started it was all over! Grandmother always said.)
Around me are plastic buckets and shovels in every colour. Now and then I stick a shovel in the sand and unearth another lump. Petrified cat poo. That’s where the unique smell comes from. Old sand with old poo makes for a smell that I will still recognise in designer gardens forty years later. I don’t think Mother would have let me play there if she knew the pit was an irresistible ablution facility for the neighbourhood’s night cats, but how could she have known? Cats bury and I sit with little shovels.
There in front of the house is my father. He’s trimming the edges of the lawn. He is tall and strong and very handsome. His arms bulge like in a drawing when he works in the garden. Schoolgirls and their mothers smile and say hello when they walk by, then they giggle and whisper to each other. I can see this from the pit.
On the porch is my mother. She is very pretty, she has dark women’s hair (women’s hair: not straight, not curly, not short, not long, just to the neck with the merest presence of a soft wave) and a tiny waist. She is dressed in a gleaming white blouse with short sleeves and a wide skirt with big flowers. She puts a small bowl on the porch wall.
Here’s a bit of biltong, she says. Eat slowly.
She walks back into the house to check if my little brother is still sleeping. It was a small, small house, to me it was a big, big house. There were five steps from the sandpit to the porch, a cool porch with a polished cement floor and the same pitched roof as the rest of the house, always cool. Inside was a passageway, to the left was Father and Mother’s room, my little brother’s bed was also there, further down the passage was the door to my room, a big room with, behind a second door, its own toilet and washbasin. At the end of the passage was the bathroom. To the right of the front door was the lounge, then a door to the dining room, here lay the newspaper. Then the kitchen with a table in the middle and a window above the sink.
The sun moves behind the tree and a ray of light hits my face. Squinting, I look up. I am showered in golden dust.
Did you read the label? a voice yells, shrill and hysterical. You can’t just throw it!
I forgot! says a second voice, this one is thin and quavering.
Read it now! What does it say?
Appetite!
The child already has an enormous appetite! He was born like that! Do you realise what the rest of his life is going to look like?
I’m sorry!
I blink my eyes. I can’t see anyone. Again I am showered in golden dust.
Now I’ve given him Fear, says the shrill voice, I could see on his suitcase he was born without it. You have one more bottle, first read the label!
It’s Doubt, says the quavering voice.
Yes, that’s right. It’s sad, but go ahead, throw!
Again the golden dust. Through the glitter I see something flutter. Something moves out of the sun and circles above my head. A dragonfly? No, I see a tiny face. A lean body hangs from two see-through wings, I see dark hair and a delicate dress that flickers, coppery and sparkling. I have never seen anything like this, but I know it’s a fairy. There is a second flapping creature, a heavy little body that struggles to stay in the air, up and down, fall and rise, the dainty wings flap fiercely, the light hair tangles in the little face. Her dress is pinkish-white and bunches around her like a cocoon.
I have one more bottle, says the first fairy with the shrill voice. It’s Rage. Without this he’ll be defenceless.
Golden dust gleams in the ray of light.
Becca! she yells. Where are you?
Here! says the second voice.
I turn my head. The heavy one is flapping round and round the bowl of biltong on the porch wall.
I am so hungry, she says, I’ll just take one bite.
It’s meat! yells the brunette.
Meat?
The child’s mother put it there! They eat dried meat! Do you realise what’s going to happen now?
Bora! screams the heavy fairy.
She falls from the sky, behind the porch wall, I can’t see what is happening.
There’s a flash of copper, the light fairy dives down to the bowl of biltong and hangs upside down. Is she also eating? Suddenly she shoots into the air.
Becca! she yells.
She too drops behind the porch wall.
Mommmm! I yell.
I hear strange noises, someone gasps for air, something rips, someone sobs, someone sighs. Two human figures appear from behind the porch wall, one tall, one short, one thin, one round, one with stringy dark hair, one with a messy bush of blonde hair.
Daaaddddd!
The figures stumble down the steps, each with her arms wrapped around herself, trying to keep the ripped dresses together. Like people who have never walked, they lift their feet high and struggle with big steps to the garden gate.
My mother comes running out the front door, my father appears from the back of the house.
What’s going on? asks my mother. Why is your head shining?
I point. The garden gate is open. Two figures waddle up the hill.
You don’t have to be scared, says my mother. They’re probably just collecting. They could have closed the gate at least – manners, manners.
One day my mother puts my baby brother in his pram, buckles me into my dark-red sandals and takes my hand. The three of us go up the hill to the big house on the other side of the vineyard. The big house doesn’t have a garden gate like normal houses, just a gate for cars, no car. We walk through the small crowd of lemon trees covered with golden-yellow ovals, each