Vercueil got up, went behind a tree, urinated. Then, to my surprise, he came and lay down again. The dog snuggled against him, its nose in his crotch. With my tongue I probed the sore place in my mouth, tasting the blood.
'I have not changed my mind,' I said. 'I still detest these calls for sacrifice that end with, young men bleeding to death in the mud. War is never what it pretends to be. Scratch the surface and you find, invariably, old men sending young men to their death in the name of some abstraction or other. Despite what Mr Thabane says (I do not blame him, the future comes disguised, if it came naked we would be petrified by what we saw), it remains a war of the old upon the young. Freedom or death! shout Bheki and his friends. Whose words? Not their own. Freedom or death!, I have no doubt, those two little girls are rehearsing in their sleep. No! I want to say: Save yourselves!
'Whose is the true voice of wisdom, Mr Vercueil? Mine, I believe. Yet who am. I, who am I to have a voice at all? How can I honourably urge them to turn their back on that call? What am I entitled to do but sit in a corner with my mouth shut? I have no voice; I lost it long ago; perhaps I have never had one. I have no voice, and that is that. The rest should be silence. But with this – whatever it is – this voice that is no voice, I go on. On and on.'
Was Vercueil smiling? His face was hidden. In a toothless whisper sticky with sibilants I went on.
'A crime was committed long ago. How long ago? I do not know. But longer ago than 1916, certainly. So long ago that I was born into it. It is part of my inheritance. It is part of me, I am part of it.
'Like every crime it had its price. That price, I used to think, would have to be paid in shame: in a life of shame and a shameful death, unlamented, in an obscure corner. I accepted that. I did not try to set myself apart. Though it was not a crime I asked to be committed, it was committed in my name.
I raged at times against the men who did the dirty work -you have seen it, a shameful raging as stupid as what it raged against – but I accepted too that, in a sense, they lived inside me. So that when in my rages I wished them dead, I wished death on myself too. In the name of honour. Of an honourable notion of honour. Honestamors.
'I have no idea what;freedom is, Mr Vercueil. I am sure Bheki and his friend had no idea either. Perhaps freedom is always and only what is unimaginable. Nevertheless, we know unfreedom when we see it – don't we? Bheki was not free, and knew it. You are not free, at least not on this earth, nor am I. I was born a slave and I will most certainly die a slave. A life in fetters, a death in fetters: that is part of the price, not to He quibbled at, not to be whined about.
'What I did not know, what I did not know - listen to me now! – was that the price was even higher. I had miscalculated. Where did the mistake come in? It had something to do with honour, with the notion I clung to through thick and thin, from my education, from my reading, that in his soul the honourable man can suffer no harm. I strove always for honour, for a private honour, using shame as my guide. As long as I was ashamed I knew I had not wandered into dishonour. That was the use of shame: as a touchstone, something that would always be there, something you could come back to like a blind person, to touch, to tell you where you were. For the rest: I kept: a decent distance from my shame. I did not wallow in it. Shame never became a shameful pleasure; it never ceased to gnaw me. I was not proud of it, I was ashamed of it. My shame, my own. Ashes in my mouth day after day after day, which never ceased to taste like ashes.
'It is a confession I am making here, this morning, Mr Vercueil,' I said, 'as full a confession as I know how. I withhold no secrets. I have been a good person, I freely confess to it. I am a good person still. What times these are when to be a good person is not enough!
'What I had not calculated on was that more might be called for than to be good. For there are plenty of good people in this country. We are two a penny, we good and nearly good. What the times call for is quite different from goodness. The times call for heroism. A word that, as I speak it, sounds foreign to my lips. I doubt that I have ever used it before, even in a lecture. Why not? Perhaps out of respect. Perhaps out of shame. As one drops one's gaze before a naked man. I would have used the words heroic status instead, I think, in a lecture. The hero with his heroic status. The hero, that antique naked figure.'
A deep groan came from Vercueil's throat. I craned over, but all I could see was the stubble on his cheek and a hairy ear. 'Mr Vercueil!' I whispered. He did not stir. Asleep? Pretending to sleep? How much had passed him by unheard? Had he heard about goodness and heroism? About honour and shame? Is a true confession still true if it is not heard? Do you hear me, 'or have I put you to sleep too?
I went behind a bush. Birds were singing all around. Who would have thought there was such birdlife in the suburbs!
It was like Arcady. No wonder Vercueil and his friends lived out of doors. What is a roof good for but to keep off the rain?
Vercueil and his comrades.
I lay down beside him again, my feet cold and muddy. It was quite light now. On our flattened-out box in the vacant lot we must have been visible to every passer-by. That is how we must be in the eyes of the angels: people living in houses of glass, our every act naked. Our hearts naked too, beating in chests of glass. Birdsong poured down like rain.
'I feel so much better this morning,' I said. 'But perhaps we should go back now. Feeling better is usually a warning that I am going to feel worse.'
Vercueil sat up, took off his hat, scratched his scalp with long, dirty nails. The dog came trotting up from somewhere and fussed around us. Vercueil folded the cardboard and hid it in the bushes.
'Do you know I have had a breast removed?' I said out of the blue.
He fidgeted, looked uncomfortable.
'1 regret it now, of course. Regret that I am marked. It becomes like trying to sell, a piece of furniture with a scratch or a burn mark. It's still a perfectly good chair, you say, but people aren't interested. People don't like marked objects. I am talking about my life. It may not be perfectly good, but it is still a life, not a half-life. I thought I would sell it or spend it to save my honour. But who will accept it in its present state? It is like trying to spend a drachma. A perfectly good coin somewhere else, but not here. Suspiciously marked,
'But I haven't quite given up yet. I am still casting around for something to do with it. Do you have any suggestions?'
Vercueil put on his hat, tugging it down firmly fore and aft.
'I would love to buy you a new hat,' I said.
He smiled. I took his arm; slowly we set off along Vrede Street.
'Let me tell you the dream I had,' I said. 'The man in my dream didn't have a hat, but I think it was you. He had long oily hair brushed straight back from his forehead.' Long and oily; dirty too, hanging down at the back in ugly rat's-tails; but I did not mention that.
'We were at the seaside. He was teaching me to swim. He held me by the hands and drew me out while I lay flat and kicked. I was wearing a knitted costume, the kind we had in the old days, navy blue. I was a child. But then in dreams we are always children.
'He was drawing me out, backing into the sea, fixing me with his eyes. He had eyes like yours. There were no waves, just a ripple of water coming in, glinting with light. In fact the water was oily too. Where his body broke the surface the oil clung to him with the heavy sheen oil has. I thought to myself: sardine oiclass="underline" I am the little sardine: he is taking me out into the oil. I wanted to say Turn back, but dared not open my mouth for fear the oil would flood in and fill my lungs. Drowning in oiclass="underline" I had not the courage for that.'