The Shallows Read online

  Ingrid

  Winterbach

  The Shallows

  Translated by Michiel Heyns

  Human & Rousseau

  For Lou-Marié Kruger

  One

  The time there was sacred. That is how I see it in retrospect. (Is sacred a word commonly occurring in my vocabulary? No.) Whatever happened before or after, that time was sacred. Sacred! I’ll never forget it. It’s engraved on my heart. It was cold. It was raining that day when Willem Wepener and I went to view Jacobus’ body. (You didn’t want to go along. You don’t want to remember him like that, you said.) In the reception area of the undertakers there was a large reproduction of a lioness with her cubs, also several examples of wreaths and two receptionists with expressions of permanent piety. A man took us through the building, out by the back door, through puddles of rainwater, to a small back room (hardly designed for the viewing of bodies). A transparent dark-green chintz Mr Price curtain against one wall. A cement floor, cold. There Jacobus lies, in his coffin. God, as still as death! On Willem’s face an expression of unspeakable sorrow. For a long time he stands motionlessly gazing at the body.

  I spend the first night with you so that you won’t have to be on your own. Willem prepares food. He comes in from outside, half-frozen, with provisions. His cheeks are pale, there are dark rings under his eyes. We sit huddled together around the dining-room table. The food and the wine console us. Late at night I shower and at last, half-drunk, crawl between the ice-cold sheets. The day breaks dismayingly soon. I’m still clinging to the night. My first thought: Nothing will ever bring him back. A sacred time, engraved on my heart for ever.

  In the course of my life I’ve done irresponsible things. I have at times been dishonest and unfaithful. But I am loyal to those I love. Willem and I are standing in the little back room. With the back of my hand I touch Jacobus’ cold cheek. The flesh does not respond. I touch my fingers lightly to his chest, just below the tip of the breastbone. The flesh feels like clay. It’s as if my fingertips are still primed for the slightest indication of life – the tiniest undulation of the chest – and as if my fingers cannot comprehend the absolute immobility of the body. Next to me Willem stands motionless; I have never seen him so unmoving. For him touching is taboo, he says. He just stands gazing with the expression on his face of unspeakable sorrow.

  *

  I was born with a cleft palate and a harelip. I have a broad, flattish nose, a narrow forehead and hair as abundant as that of a Catholic saint. During the sixth to tenth week of pregnancy the bones and sutures of the upper jaw, nose and mouth are supposed to knit, to form the palate and upper lip. When that does not happen, the baby is born with a cleft palate and a harelip. I suspect that I was an unwanted pregnancy, and that my mother had tried to abort me during the embryonic phase. I was never told this in so many words, it is something I discerned intuitively. On account of the cleft palate and harelip I couldn’t drink properly as a baby and I had trouble learning to talk. As a result I was a furious and frustrated child. Which didn’t make it any easier for my mother – nineteen years old, with an unwelcome, unprepossessing baby, and a girl on top of that. I was operated upon. The cleft palate was repaired. But the scar of the corrected harelip is more prominent than it should be. People of both sexes find me sexually either irresistible or repulsive.

  After Jacobus’ death I packed my bags, let my house, and left for a while. I could not stand staying on in a town where mountain and tree alike are indifferent to every human vicissitude.

  Two

  The girl came to call him one morning.

  There’s a pig in the garden, she said.

  Side by side they stood on the stoep contemplating the creature. A big, black pig serenely grazing. Just as well he hadn’t started gardening yet.

  Where did she think it came from? Where would it have found its way into the yard?

  She didn’t know. (Although for some reason he thought she did know, but didn’t want to tell.)

  Didn’t she want to take a photo, for her portfolio?

  No. She didn’t photograph pigs. Pigs were bad luck.

  Says who?

  The people where she came from.

  What kind of bad luck?

  That she couldn’t tell. Any kind.

  Like what? he persisted.

  She didn’t want to say. It was bad luck to talk about bad luck, she said.

  She believed that?

  She wasn’t going to take any chances.

  This morning he found her pretty, this girl with the abundant hair and the soft, tea-coloured skin.

  They say pigs are very intelligent, he said.

  So is the devil, she said.

  Oh yes, he said, and did she believe in the devil?

  She said nothing, just smiled slightly. (He suspected she was pulling his leg.)

  Later the pig lay down in the shade of a shrub. Perhaps a suitable subject for a painting, but he was no painter of pigs, or people. The new house still had a chaotic feel to it. The sitting room was filled with unemptied boxes. He remained conscious of the pig in the garden, in the shade. He hadn’t yet tried to find the place next to the fence where it might have got in.

  In the late morning someone appeared at the gate. A man. He’d come to collect his pig, he saw it lying in the garden. The man had a big, open, attractive face. Amiable. Trusting. Tanned.

  He didn’t know one was allowed to keep pigs in a residential area, said Nick.

  He had a big plot, up there, against the mountainside, he gestured with his shoulder.

  ‘Marthinus Scheepers,’ he said, extending his hand.

  ‘Nick Steyn.’

  The man’s grip was firm. Probably needed to be, to keep pigs in check.

  ‘Come by sometime,’ said Marthinus, ‘come meet the other pigs.’ (He uttered a short, cheerful chuckle.)

  There was something about the man. The big, harmoniously sculpted head and features. A noble face. Had something gone wrong, was he feeding with the pigs now?

  ‘Does the pig have a name?’ Nick asked.

  ‘President Burgers,’ Marthinus said. ‘Primus inter porcos. A true leader. A pig of destiny.’

  ‘I see,’ said Nick.

  Man and pig departed. Almost near-neighbours. He’d have to go and see. Something about the man, something about the pig. Both with something distinguished about them? Both of them noble of countenance and harmonious of proportion.

  *

  Nick had recently bought this house in Tamboerskloof. He didn’t work there, was renting a studio in Observatory for the time being. Well out of Stellenbosch, that hotbed of complacency; a fresh start, after the breakdown of the relationship with Isabel. He’d hardly moved in, when a girl knocked at his front door one morning. She’d heard that he had rooms to rent. Where had she heard that? From the woman at the gallery. He’d hardly even breathed the possibility of rental, and already there was a potential lodger on his doorstep. The girl was wearing black velvet trousers, scuffed boots, a baby-blue fleece top that looked like a pyjama top. Her hair curled and twirled wildly around her head as if she’d just hitchhiked here on dusty roads. Her eyes were alert. Her name was Charelle Koopman. She didn’t look much older than twenty. She was doing a photography course at the Peninsula Academy of Art. This was her first year. She took her studies seriously. Where was she from? he asked. From the West Coast, Veldenburg. But she’d been in Cape Town since the previous year. The next day she moved into the spacious back room.

  And now, suddenly, one day, there was a man with a pig in his front garden. His father and a nephew of his had bought a few pigs between them way back: Large Whites, if memory served. His father was working in Johannesburg and had the pigs looked after on his sister’s farm in the Roo
ssenekal district. Something befell the pigs. He couldn’t remember what. The pigs were big and beautiful and his father had animatedly demonstrated how high they stood and how they gleamed with fat, and then something happened. Was there anybody left alive who would know what had happened? There had to be someone who knew what had befallen the pigs.

  Nick’s sister and his eldest brother wouldn’t know, because they were, as far as he was concerned, write-offs. His sister a heart surgeon sweeping through the wards of some academic hospital, teams of white-clad underlings bearing beating hearts on ice in sterile containers hot on her heels. She wouldn’t have time for pig memories. His eldest brother was a tycoon. Well, good for him. The past was not part of his frame of reference either. The only one who would have known – his other brother, five years older than he – wrote himself off big time on a motor bike in Namibia. Smuggling diamonds. (Who was to know?) His hero and tormentor. Nick was the youngest. Sickly child, everybody thought he was retarded. He led a secret life, his fantasies riding roughshod over him. Horrendous nightmares, visions of hell at a tender age; dreamt Bosch before he saw his work. Slid around on his belly in the garden like a snake or a snail, looking for something he couldn’t find at eye level. What the hell, he’d eat worms if need be. His sister did have a soft spot for him; eldest brother blinkered like a horse headlong on his way to tycoon-dom. That left Nick with smuggler brother, his hero. Smoking buddies, drinking buddies, porno-mag buddies and he barely older than ten, twelve. Brother wiped his arse on the world and was irresistibly charming on top of it. He made Nick draw. All positions. Brother was the first person who recognised Nick’s ability. Nick was a slow developer, and it was only when everybody else stopped growing that he shot up. Asthma, ringworm and pox could no longer hold him back. First he wanted to become a rugby player, then a bomber pilot. Become an artist, said his brother. Painters are sissies, said Nick. Brother showed him a photo of Jackson Pollock energetically at it. Does that look like sissy-work to you? (In the brother’s eyes it also counted in Pollock’s favour that at forty-four, drunk, he had written himself off spectacularly in a car.)

  Nick found dark women most attractive, but when it came to getting down and dirty he’d always preferred blondes. Strong calves, legs slightly bandy. Gap between the front teeth. Expression somewhere between brain-dead and horny. For god’s sake just not wholesome blondes. Slightly off, slightly slutty and clapped-out. The vacuous, dreamy gaze at parties after twelve. As far as sex was concerned? By his mid-thirties he’d had enough of it to last him two lifetimes. Up to and including his short-lived marriage. And after that, after his failed marriage, his relationship with Isabel for the last seven years. Her hair as white as flax and her skin honey-coloured in summer. Heavy eyelids, a languid gaze, a tentative smile. Her back and limbs long and narrow, like those of a Cycladic funerary idol.

  *

  One morning when he was backing out his car on his way to work, he came across Marthinus Scheepers on his morning walk. No pig at his heels.

  Marthinus was wearing a kind of Peruvian woollen cap, a snazzy tracksuit bottom, strange boots and a brightly coloured windbreaker. He greeted Nick cordially. Come by this evening, he said, come and watch a video with us.

  That afternoon Nick found a postcard in his postbox. It was a reproduction of El Greco’s portrait of Vincenzo Anastagi. The message on the back read: Any extra copies of The Shallows? V.S.

  V.S., would you believe it?! Could only be Victor Schoeman. A South African stamp. Posted here, then. This did not bode well. Did it mean that Victor was in the country? When last had they seen each other? (And that, come to think of it, went for Blinky, and Chris Kestell, and Marlena as well?!) Did he have any desire to resume contact with Victor? No. The extra copies of The Shallows that he’d stored for years, he’d had pulped when he heard nothing more from Victor. Why should he get stuck with the debt and the boxes of books?

  Good choice of postcard, Victor, he thought. The El Greco was one of his favourite paintings. He’d last seen this painting in the Frick with Isabel, on their final, fatal trip together, shortly before the end of their relationship, in November the previous year. Not that he’d been all that keen to visit the Frick (had by and large had his fill of Western painting), but for her it had been a trip fraught with meaning, a kind of pilgrimage perhaps. And there in the Frick she’d suddenly pressed her hands to her ears (why not her eyes, he’d wondered), gone in great haste to claim her coat from the cloakroom, and run away (he couldn’t describe it in any other way). He’d followed, into the cold streets, a freezing wind (as if from Siberia) on their cheeks and wet snow in the streets. He managed to lure her into an Oriental museum and teahouse, where he could calm her down with a delicate snow pea and shrimp soup and tea from little Japanese earthenware teapots. Some colour returned to her cheeks. (I can’t any longer, he thought, I can’t carry you any longer, it takes too much out of me.) She cheered up so much that later she was even exuberant, flirtatious, but the day had been spoiled for him. He was morose; he no longer wanted to be charmed by her. Forgive me, she said, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

  Three

  Your lover, and my beloved friend. You were speechless with grief, your cheeks cold as alabaster. A month or so later I packed my bags and left. I should have stayed, I should have stood by you, but if I stayed, I thought, I’d perish. After Jacobus’ death there was a short circuit in my head, I had to betake myself to some other environment, or perish.

  We get together only at the beginning of the new year in the coffee shop, after your return from your long, extended travels. The coffee shop has a dark interior. How glad I am to see your dear face once again. I take your face in my two hands and I say: It’s been such a long while that we haven’t seen each other! We gaze into each other’s eyes long and feelingly. We sit down at a little corner table. Outside it’s been raining incessantly since the previous day. Now at last we’re both back in town, I say. You have no plans to leave again? No, I don’t have any such plans. And how do you find it, being back? you ask. I don’t know, I say. You know how ambivalent I am about the town. I had an aversion to the place for so long. I have it still, at times very intensely. Aversion or fear? you ask. Perhaps a bit of both. While I was away, I often thought that I didn’t want to come back.

  The waitress brings our coffee. We are both silent for a while. How are you? I ask. You don’t reply immediately, keep your gaze lowered. Move a grain of sugar around on the table with your finger. Things have never been the same again, you say softly. Everything has changed subtly but inexorably. Not quite drowning, but with the solid ground caved in under your feet. Could it ever be different again – doesn’t time bring change? I ask; or so they say, in any case. Maybe, maybe not, you say, how would you know? At the moment it doesn’t feel as if it could ever be different again.

  Again we fall silent, and listen to the rain falling gently but persistently. And your trip, I ask, did it make any difference? It provided temporary diversion, you say, though you sometimes think you should have stayed and faced out your grief. That could perhaps have hastened the healing process.

  I’ve started writing a monograph on the Olivier brothers, I say. You’ve been planning to do it for a long time, you say. Yes, but it’s taken me a long time to get going, I say. There are few people in the coffee shop, the interior is dark, sound is muffled by the incessant rain outside. I hope to be granted an interview with the brothers’ father, with Marcus Olivier, but it’s not that easy.

  We sit in silence for a while, listening to the rain. Drink our coffee. Then abruptly you look up and ask, what are you to do?

  *

  When we get up to leave, I feel slightly light-headed, whether with joy or dismay or general disorientation is not clear to me. We take our leave. I don’t feel young, I don’t feel old. It is high summer, in the streets the foliage is dense, the shadows sharp after the rain.

  I am reading a book in which the deceased Fernando Pessoa visits one of his a
lter egos (and heteronyms), Ricardo Reis. Reis has recently moved into an apartment after his sojourn of more than two months in the Hotel Bragança, and this is his first night in his new abode; it’s cold, he’s hardly dropped off when somebody knocks. It’s Pessoa. Reis invites him in, they talk for a while, then Pessoa says Reis should lie down again, he doesn’t want to keep him from his sleep. Reis lies down, Pessoa tucks in the sheet over him as solicitously as a mother. Reis asks him to switch off the light. Initially the room is dark, then the light from outside seeps in through the chinks in the shutters. Reis closes his eyes and murmurs: Good night, Fernando. It seems to him as if it takes Pessoa quite a while to reply: Good night, Ricardo. Pessoa sits down on a chair in the room, crosses one leg over the other, places his hands on his knee. He is the very image of desolation. Reis wakes up in the middle of the night, the rain has stopped, the earth hurtles on through the utter silence of space. Pessoa is still sitting in the same place, in exactly the same posture, his face expressionless. Reis goes back to sleep. When he wakes up in the morning, Pessoa is no longer there. He must have left at first light.

  Initially it rains incessantly in the city, Lisbon. A carnival festivity features a figure dressed in a tight black outfit with a skeleton painted on it in white. Dancing bones. At times I have a yen to dress myself in such a suit. On my bedside table is the skull of wire and white beads that I had made in the Eastern Cape by Zimbabweans. At night it keeps watch over me like Fernando Pessoa over his alter ego, Ricardo Reis.

  Four

  One morning a week after the pig episode Nick walked up the hill to Marthinus’ place. He wanted to inspect the set-up there. The idea of pigs interested him. Perhaps he should also acquire a pig, to compensate for the loss of his father’s pigs, the Large Whites.

  Down the street, and then two blocks further along, towards the top of the hill (surprisingly close), he came upon the house. Whereas his house faced the sea squarely, with the mountain behind him, here the mountain was to the right and the sea to the left of Marthinus’ house. The house was set fairly far back, high up, with a staircase that ran all the way from the front gate to the wide stoep. There was a sign fixed to the gate: This property is patrolled by pigs. Not a pig in sight. The front garden, not very big, was terraced on both sides of the staircase. These terraces were planted with flowers and vegetables. Everything here testified to the hand of a dedicated gardener.