I turned to Vercueil. 'Shall we go?' I said. And on an impulse – no, more than that, with a conscious effort not to block the stirring of the impulse – I touched the boy's free hand.
It was not a clasp, not a long touch; it was the merest brush, the merest lingering of my fingertips on the back of his hand. But I felt him stiffen, felt an angry electric recoil.
For your mother, who is not here, I said within myself. Aloud I said: 'Be slow to judge.'
Be slow to judge: what did I mean? If I did not know, who else could be expected to? Certainly not: he. Yet in his case, 1 was sure, the incomprehension ran deeper. My words fell off him like dead leaves the moment they were uttered. The words of a woman, therefore negligible; of an old woman, therefore doubly negligible; but above all of a white.
I, a white. When I think of the whites, what do I see? I see a herd of sheep (not a flock: a herd) milling around on a dusty plain under the baking sun. I hear a drumming of hooves, a confusion of sound which resolves itself, when the ear grows attuned, into the same bleating call in a thousand different inflections: 'I!' 'I!' 'I!' And, cruising among them, bumping them aside with their bristling flanks, lumbering, saw-toothed, red-eyed, the savage, unreconstructed old boars grunting 'Death!.' 'Death!' Though it does me no good, I flinch from the white touch as much as he does; would even flinch from the old white woman who pats his hand if she were not I.
I tried again.
'Before I retired,' I said, 'I was a teacher. I taught at the university. '
Vercueil eyed me keenly from the other side of the bed. But I was not talking to him.
'If you had been in my Thucydides class,' I went on, 'you might have learned something about what can happen to our humanity in time of war. Our humanity, that we are 'Born' with, that we are born into.'
There was something smoky about the boy's eyes: the whites without lustre, the pupils flat, dark, like printer's ink. Though he may have been sedated, he knew I was there, knew who I was, knew I was talking to him. He knew and he did not listen, as he had never listened to any of his teachers, but had sat like a stone in the classroom, impervious to words, waiting for the bell to ring, biding his time.
'Thucydides wrote of people who made rules and followed them. Going by rule they killed entire classes of enemies without exception. Most of those who died felt, I am sure, that a terrible mistake was being made, that, whatever the rule was, it could not be meant for them. 'I! -': that was their last word as their throats were cut. A word of protest: I, the exception.
'Were they exceptions? The truth is given time to speak, we would all claim to be exceptions. For each of us there is a case to be made. We all deserve the benefit of the doubt.
'But there are times when there is no time for all that close listening, all those exceptions, all that mercy. There is no time, so we fall back on the rule. And that is a great pity, the greatest pity. That is what you could have learned from Thucydides. It is a great pity when we find ourselves entering upon times like those. We should enter upon them with a sinking heart. They are by no means to be welcomed.'
Quite deliberately he put his good hand under the sheet, in case I should touch it again.
'Good night,' I said. 'I hope you sleep well and feel better in the morning.'
The old man had stopped chanting. His hands flapped loosely on his thighs like dying fish. His eyes were rolled back, there were streaks of spittle on his chin.
The car would not start, and Vercueil had to push.
'That boy is different from Bheki, quite different,' I said, talking too much now, a little out of control. 'I try not to show it, but he makes me nervous. I am sorry Bheki has fallen under his influence. But there are hundreds of thousands like him, I suppose. More than there are like Bheki. The rising generation.'
We got home. Uninvited, he followed me in.
'I have to sleep, I am exhausted,' I said; and then, when he made no move to leave: 'Do you want something to eat?'
I put food in front of him, took my pills, waited.
Holding the loaf of bread, with his bad hand, he cut a slice, buttered, it thickly, cut cheese. His fingernails filthy. Who knows what else he had been touching. And this is the one to whom I speak my heart, whom I trust with last things. Why this crooked path to you?
My mind like a pool, which his finger enters and stirs. Without that finger stillness, stagnation.
'A way of indirection. By indirection I find direction out. A crab's-walk. His dirty fingernail entering me.
'You look grey,' he said.
'I am tired.'
He chewed, showing long teeth.
He watches but does not judge. Always a faint haze of alcohol about him. Alcohol, that softens, preserves. Mollificans. That helps us to forgive. He drinks and makes allowances. His life all allowances. He, Mr V, to whom I speak. Speak and then write. Speak in order to write. While to the rising generation, who do not drink, I cannot speak, can only lecture. Their hands clean, their fingernails clean. The new puritans, holding to the rule, holding up the rule. Abhorring alcohol, that softens the rule, dissolves iron. Suspicious of all that is idle, yielding, roundabout. Suspicious of devious discourse, like this.
'And I am sick too,' I said. 'Sick and tired, tired and sick. I have a child inside that I cannot give birth to, Cannot because it will not be born. Because it cannot live outside me. So it is my prisoner or I am its prisoner. It beats on the gate but it cannot leave. That is what is going on all the time. The child inside is beating at the gate. My daughter is my first child. She is my life. This is the second one, the afterbirth, the unwanted. Would you like to watch television?'
'I thought you wanted to sleep.'
'No, I would rather not be alone now. The one inside isn't beating so hard, anyway. He has had his pill, he is getting drowsy. The dose is always two pills, you notice, one for me, one for him.'
We sat down side by side on the sofa. A ruddy-faced man was being interviewed. He owned a game farm, it appeared, and rented out lions and elephants to film companies.
'Tell us about some of the overseas personalities you have met,' said the interviewer.
'I'm going to make some tea,' I said, getting up.
'Is there anything else in the house?' said Vercueil.
'Sherry.'
When I returned with the sherry bottle he was standing at the bookshelf. I switched off the television. 'What are you looking at?' I asked.
He held up one of the heavy quartos.
'You will find that book interesting,' I said. 'The woman who wrote it travelled through Palestine and Syria disguised as a man. In the last century. One of those intrepid Englishwomen. But she didn't do the pictures. They were done by a professional illustrator.'
Together we paged through the book. By some trick of perspective the illustrator had given to moonlit encampments, desert crags, ruined temples an air of looming mystery. No one has done that for South Africa: made it into a land of mystery. Too late now. Fixed in the mind as a place of flat, hard light, without shadows, without depth.
'Read whatever you like,' I said. 'There are many more books upstairs. Do you like reading?'
Vercueil put down the book. 'I'll go to bed now, ' he said.
Again a flicker of embarrassment passed across me. Why? Because, to be candid, I do not like the way he smells. Because Vercueil in his underwear I prefer not to think of. The feet worst of alclass="underline" the horny, caked toenails.
'Can I ask you a question?' I said. 'Where did you live before? Why did you start wandering?'
'I was at sea,' said Vercueil. '1 told you that.'
'But one doesn't live at sea. One isn't born at sea. You haven't been at sea all your life. '
'I was on trawlers.'