October Page 3

  Mercia laughed, relieved that she could set his mind at rest. Are you mad? Do I strike you as someone who could be beaten? No one, she assured him, would as much as try. When apartheid came to an end, and it wouldn’t be long, Craig would come to meet them, and he could see for himself that she was not living with a brute. She felt his anxiety, and so said nothing about his use of the word nonwhite. She shudders to think how her father would have interpreted Craig’s leaving. Would she have told him at all?

  Jake, overdressed in a dark pinstripe suit and carrying a leather briefcase, laughed uproariously. Mercia could do with a good hiding, he said. I thought, Grootbaas, all those beatings when we were children were meant to prepare us for marriage. Now Mercia knows what to expect, and I’ll know what my wife will feel when I beat the shit out of her.

  It’s no laughing matter, the old man said. I have set you an example. You do not as much as hurt a hair on the head of any woman, let alone a wife. When your mother and I—

  Jake interrupted, holding up both palms. Oh please, not another sermon. Look, I promise to choose a wife like Mercia, one who can’t be beaten.

  Do you like my gear, Jake said mockingly, once their father had left. This nonsense, it’s what Grootbaas rigged up for me, and you know what? I didn’t have the nerve to say no. So here I am, Mr. Bigshit, I mean Mr. Bigshot, driving a Chevy in my suit and tie. I’m in the liquor business, the only secure business in South Africa, one that will never go under. Your people over there in Britain will pretend to boycott South African products, but you know what? My shares in liquor are doing just fine. So now, and he held out his wide lapels parodically, I’m a proper playboy, hey.

  Then he looked her up and down, puzzled by her plain skirt and T-shirt, the scuffed flat shoes. Aren’t you supposed to be some grand professor or something? So what’s it with the clothes? Do you think you have to dress down for us? Are we not good enough for you? For a proper hairdo and makeup? We’re not plaasjapies anymore. I’m a city playboy, don’t you know.

  Yes, I mean no, not at all, Mercia stumbled. I teach in a university, that’s all, not a professor. At any rate, not yet. And you, playboy of the Western world, she sighed, for peering ahead, squinting through time, she saw a flash of axe being wielded at their father’s head.

  For some time Jake had addressed their father as Grootbaas, a name the old man found amusing. But Mercia knew that Jake simply could not bring himself to call him Father, saw that the child’s fear and dislike of Nicholas had not dissipated with time. Surely that was childish, she said to Jake, surely you can see him as a product of his time?

  Mercia was shocked by the bitterness of his reply. Let me be. You left home, you got away, so no need to bother your head with me. But don’t expect me to stand in for you, to be the dutiful child.

  On the sideboard there is a photograph of Jake clutching at his mother’s skirts. A plump child, but in those days, in those parts, not wanting to look impoverished, it was known as healthy and strong. The mother is of another era. Her dress sports a bow at the throat, the skirt skims her ankles, and her hair is raked back severely into a bun. Good hair all the same. No hot iron, her husband would proudly offer apropos of nothing, has ever touched that head. If nowadays it is the look of a prude, it is worth remembering that then the severity signaled that she was a good woman. There is further, bucolic virtue in the hand that rests on the haft of a garden spade. There is nothing of the raciness one would expect to find in one called Antoinette.

  Some who come across the photograph are surprised. Has Jake not claimed that his mother died in childbirth? That he was responsible for her death?

  Nowadays, a disheveled Jake shrugs, Whatever, who gives a shit. And if the speaker is one of those smarty-pants Cape Town types, he may throw in, shockingly, Jou ma se poes, and cackle at the sharp intake of breath. That is Jake’s new thing: being a foulmouthed, lowdown, drunken colored.

  Sylvie is furious; she has been betrayed. It further infuriates her that he would never use such language in Mercia’s presence. What use is it being married to a Murray who has sunk lower than the lowest farm laborer?

  The poor Antoinette might as well have died in childbirth for all the trouble the boy had been. Fat, in spite of being breast-fed, and jolly as an infant, he was much given to laughter, a levity that turned out to be a precursor to lewdness. At the age of two and a half Jake discovered his penis, which he whipped out at every opportunity, both in public and private, causing his parents unspeakable shame and distress. For all the punishment, the child simply would not understand that he was doing wrong. Once he found the matted doughnut around which Nettie wrapped her hair into a perfect bun, and balancing it over his erect peetie stumbled giggling into the room where a meeting of deacons was being held. They took him to Dr. Groenewald, whose assurance that the child would grow out of it Nicholas thought to be mealy-mouthed. In the meantime, he recommended, circumcision was worth a try, advice that Nicholas scorned. God could not possibly approve of bits of the body being lopped off. He would rather rely on the solution of regular beatings.

  On Sunday nights before supper their father held aloft the aapstert whilst he reiterated the sacred duty of chastising his own flesh and blood. That was what the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob commanded. Nicholas did not relish this task, but in addition to whipping them at the time of actual transgressions, he would beat both children for the secret sins accumulated through the week, for those that only God knew of. Mercia complained that she did not even have a peetie, which earned her an extra blow; they were not to speak of the organs.

  Nettie thanked the Lord when Jake grew bored with his peetie. She suggested that they now could drop the Sunday thrashings, but Nicholas explained that that would be wrong, that it would encourage other secret sins. Jake, who retained no memory of the peetie days, did his best to justify the punishment, and with hearty laughter boasted of his misdemeanors. Thus his mother came to understand the necessity of the aapstert, even if she thought the instrument brutal. Would a stick not do, she asked, but Nicholas said no, that animal hide, used also by the police, was the material for correction, that they were the unfortunate parents of a miscreant.

  Nettie worried about the boy’s waywardness, and in the short week that it took for her to die, got Nicholas to promise that Jake would be shepherded through school and sent to university to study medicine, that he should start by teaching the boy Latin. Which Nicholas hoped to achieve by keeping up the regular beatings of both children.

  Jake was eleven years old when he completed primary school, and took the aapstert to the cemetery behind the hill. He checked the graves, mounds of baked red earth studded with white stones, and the rough wooden crosses with names of the departed and dearly beloveds in crooked writing. There he found Antoinette’s, away from the rest, where the veld was left to encroach. Jake pulled out his mother’s cross, and alongside her grave, covered with soutslaai and vygies, used it to dig a long, slightly curved channel in which he laid out the aapstert. With his bare hands he scraped together the red earth to mark the curve of the grave.

  The very name, aapstert, was proof of his father’s folly. The whip was of course not the tail of an ape, who would have bared his teeth and hissed rather than part with his tail; rather, it was the cured hide of a common donkey’s tail, a stupid obedient animal that bowed to its fate. Jake would not wait for the earth to settle. He collected white stones from the hill and arranged them to write the letters along the curved grave: DONKIESTERT. He remembered just in time to replant Antoinette’s wooden cross. The very next day an unseasonal rainstorm washed much of the mound away, but the leather switch lay snugly in its grave, under the mangled letters of dislodged stones.

  That Sunday night Nicholas looked behind the door where the aapstert was kept, found it gone, and found Jake with arms folded, looking him squarely in the eyes. It’s dead and buried, you’ll never find it, he said calmly. Nicholas clenched his fists, shook his head, and proclaimed: Gods water oor G
ods akker. Mindful perhaps of Nettie’s misgivings, he asked no questions and never again mentioned the aapstert. Jake could have sworn that, for all the show of disappointment, Nicholas was relieved. But, if the Sunday-night ritual was stopped, Nicholas did not now hesitate to remove his belt and thrash the offending child within the proverbial inch of his life.

  Not even a full day has Mercia been here in Kliprand, and already she would like to wash her hands of these people who are her own, would like to pack her bag right away and leave. But that is not possible. One does not walk away from family. Patience and kindness, that is what family lays claim to. Which may mean that one should not come to see them in the first place.

  Mercy, that was what her father called her. You’ll be a professional, an angel of mercy, called to minister to the sick and needy, he pronounced. Nice and smart, that nurse’s uniform of starched whites and good brown walkers, perfect for an angel of mercy. Of course, being a clever girl, you’ll be promoted to matron in no time. Which sounded fine until Mercia reached her teens and thought with distaste of a matron’s headdress, clearly modeled on that of a nun.

  Nonsense, Nicholas said, nursing was not only a good profession, it was also a noble vocation. Mercia’s argument that a vocation could by definition not be imposed by another did not sway him. What did was the confident assertion that she’d be a doctor instead. Nicholas had expected Jake to be a doctor, that’s what he promised dear Nettie, but really, he had his doubts about the reprobate boy. Anyway, so much better if there were two of them. And if Mercia’s Matric results showed her to be outstanding in languages, she allowed herself to be bullied into registering for a science degree. After a BSc her father said, she could transfer to medicine at the white university.

  It was less than halfway through the year that a disheartened Mercia gave up. Could she not start again the following year on an arts degree of English and history? Nicholas tried once more to sell the noble vocation of nursing, before giving in.

  When Mercia gained her doctorate her father shook his head: a doctor of literature who could not even cure a headache? He hoped she would not go about calling herself doctor, making a fool of herself. Doctoring books, he said wistfully, well, what good could that do? He supposed if one day it brought a steady, well-paid job . . .

  It was shortly after her mother’s death that Mercia announced that she would no longer answer to the name of Mercy.

  Jake complained. No man, Mercy man, it’s too late now. How would a person remember to call you by that mouthful of a name? Anyway what’s in a name? In that little add-on?

  Everything, she said, and stuck to her guns until everyone learned to say Mercia. An entirely new name was really what she had had in mind: how much better something plain, like Mary or Jane; she hated both Mercy and Mercia. But her father exploded, an outrage it was to her mother’s memory, so that she abandoned the idea.

  Now that she is an older woman, she ought not to care. That label after all supersedes a name, wipes out presence itself, as she has found even in her privileged position. An older woman is not only left, but left behind, which she supposes refers to reproduction, as if that is what every woman wants. Here, back home, it is clearer than ever that a child would have been a horrible mistake. Not that she has ever had any doubts. But then, once upon a time she was sure of Craig, sure enough not to marry—oh it does not bear thinking about.

  And once, in bygone days, Mercia was a place, an English region, the name for border people, which she supposes has its own resonance for certain South Africans like them, or for that matter her own liminal self. Nicholas and Nettie would not have known these meanings, on that dry Namaqua plain would not have known of the lush Trent Valley, the land of the Mercians. No, more likely they were guided by the word mercy, guided by a cry that must have issued from every soul who set foot in that godforsaken place. But Mercia cannot take her cue from mercy, since there is for her no deity who will or will not, according to his caprice, dispense the stuff. Given the Christian fondness for abstract nouns, the virtues as names, she supposes that she has come off lightly after all. Imagine being called Charity, Prudence, Sobriety, or Virtue itself. Names for girls. Names that boys happily escape.

  Mercia—she has always hated the name, and attached to Murray it sounds too foolishly alliterative, an aural joke, thus a good enough reason to marry and take a stranger’s name. Which she now supposes she may well have done had there been children, but not having the stomach for reproduction, and with Craig’s claim that he didn’t care for children, it seemed too self-loathing to take another’s name. Abbreviated to Mercy, the name puzzled the child, for whom words, if not names, had meanings. What was the child to make of Mercy? That as an embodiment of mercy she, like a god, would be the one to dispense it? Or was she to inspire mercy in others, which gave her license to offend? Would she have wanted mercy from Craig? That too does not bear thinking about.

  Here in Kliprand, trapped in this cramped house where Jake lies in a darkened room, it would seem that she must be the angel of mercy, though what quality of mercy she cannot imagine. All she knows is that it won’t be easy, that its twice-blessed promise has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Rather, it will be a haphazard affair, like groping for an herb or spice in a dark cupboard, any herb or spice for flinging into a tasteless stew. Mercia does not see herself as being up to the task. No, it’s ridiculous. Jake can’t expect her to take the child.

  The child seems about five years old, but how would Mercia know, having had so little to do with children? There is the full mouth and the brow of the Murrays to identify him as one of them, but he is very like his mother, more’s the pity. It puzzles her, Jake’s retreat to Kliprand. They have always talked about it as a place to leave behind, so why has he stayed and taken this Kliprand girl as wife? Mercia corrects herself; she must not be unkind or snobbish, must also try to see things from the mother’s point of view. It is difficult though, given Sylvie’s eagerness, the way she presents the child like a trophy, as if reproduction were a feat.

  The child is uncomfortable. His eyes flit between his shoes and Mercia’s face, but then, as if preparing himself for combat, he boldly returns her stare. Shame, his eyes sparkle; he is a little boy with an irrepressible brightness about him. The brightness tugs at her heart, or is she being unsettled by the word that has crept up on her? For it suggests to her that he is doomed, that he will pay for the sins of others. Mercia wishes that her father’s horrible notion of sin would keep out of her consciousness. The boy is bright, new as a penny, but then one would imagine that all children are necessarily bright and new, that is, until they are scuffed or battered by parents. Who may not mean to, as the poet has it, but nowadays even that sounds optimistic.

  For all his brave stare, there is something about the child, something that casts a shadow, a guardedness perhaps, and there is, if she is not mistaken, a faint trembling of his chin as if he is summoning the courage to speak. Like an old man he runs his hand across the tight black curls, then settles his shoulders in an extravagant gesture of nonchalance.

  Nicky, this is your auntie Mercy. Give Auntie Mercy a kiss, his mother commands. Mercia winces at the woman’s loud voice.

  No, he says. Upon which his mother slaps him decisively about the legs; she will not have any rudeness from him. The child does not flinch. He steps forward and formally holds out his hand for Mercia to shake, so that his barely proffered cheek discourages kissing. The gesture relieves for her the shock of the smack. Should she say something? Let the woman know that it is despicable to beat children? But then, what difference would it make; the mother—for that is how she thinks of Sylvie, formally, in terms of the biological relationship—would pay no attention, would think of Mercia with her fancy foreign ideas as meddling. Oh yes, Mercia all but hears her say, there overseas where people still are decent, children may know how to behave and so, of course, do not need the belt. But here, in this godforsaken place, nothing other than a smack will keep a child on the s
traight and narrow, prevent him from diving straight into indecency and drunkenness. Things have really gone wild in this New South Africa. A person can’t allow any rudeness at all; give them a pinkie and they grab the entire hand; and besides, what did Mercy know about being a parent?

  The trick is not to give the woman too many opportunities to air her views. But the smack, the affront, smarts in Mercia’s own flesh, so that she drops to her haunches and pats the boy about the legs where she imagines the imprint of his mother’s hand lingers under the synthetic fabric, a gesture that the mother understands only too well.

  It is I, his mother, Sylvie says, only I, who have to see to him, make sure he behaves, right from when he was only so small, and her flattened palm skims the imaginary head of a smaller child. This Nicholas boy is now stubborn, even as a baby he always wanted his own way. Takes after you people, the Murrays, so I have to make sure from the start that he does as he’s told. And my word, you just have to beat him before he’d listen, enough to break any mother’s heart. That brother of yours does nothing, doesn’t care, leaves us to find our own way, just as long as he has his bottle. She giggles. Like a baby really, before her face straightens and resumes: that is why the child must now look to you, the auntie, for help, for direction to his life. As I said to Nicky, just because your father is useless doesn’t mean you don’t have family to keep an eye on you. Auntie Mercy—you are all he has left.

  Sylvie knows that this is what Jake calls whining, but she can’t stop herself from piling grievance upon grievance, from uttering the thoughts that nibble day and night with no hope of abatement. If it were not for her part-time job at the butcher’s shop, what would they eat? And the worry about the child—whether his father, now apparently confined to bed, can care for him even for the few hours that she’s at work. Then there are the years to come, clothing, schooling and all the gedoente of growing up. God alone knows what they’ll do, she and the child, what will happen to Jake, who is surely drinking himself into an early grave. If she could keep Nicky on the straight and narrow he could be a doctor, a real doctor, she adds pointedly.