Annesu de Vos debuteer in 1980 op 16-jarige ouderdom met die digbundel Gebed van ’n groen perske. Sy studeer aan die Universiteit van die Witwatersrand, maar verlaat die land weens haar man se dienspligweiering voor sy haar studie kon voltooi. Sy werk vryskut in Kanada, waar sy sedertdien woon.

Skinny-dipping

When the phone rang, he knew. It could be nothing but trouble, it had that unexpected ring about it. For a moment he considered not picking it up: his decadent rationalism prevented him from believing that he could subsequently be redeemed from whatever it was. Then curiosity got the better of him.
         They had never spoken before, they had not so much as shared a coffee at one of the faux marble tables with blue and yellow plastic chairs in the Concourse; their paths did not cross in the ordinary course of events on campus. He, the serious student, busying himself ceaselessly with Lacan and Foucault and the likes: she, a B.A. majoring in Riot Police Evasion Tactics ... her area of specialisation did not interest him in the slightest. He was hardly aware that they were at school together: they did not even run into each other in the library ... this lack of good fortune probably due to her lack of interest in its contents, and due to no fault of his own.
         “Well, you do and you don’t,” she explained in response to his cold enquiry, “do I know you?”
         “We saw each other at that meeting years ago, at least I saw you; you were one of the speakers. I could not understand anything you said, but I did find you fascinating, and you would have been informed of my joining the organization when they welcomed the new members that year ... I don’t think you would have been too excited about me. I was too mainstream for you, I’m sorry to say. But the name would probably ring a bell at least.” And then she said it; her name.
         “Okay,” he said, keeping his voice steady despite an overpowering urge to stutter, “and you want me to do what precisely tonight at midnight?”
         “Show up at the swimming pool,” she answered, and he could measure the precise width of her lascivious smile by the sound of the word “pool” ... “It could change your life.”
         “We shall see about that,” he muttered. “Writers do not generally like to become characters in stories, you know,” he admonished her. “Somewhat like journalists who do not wish to become the subject of news.”
         “Oh, but this is different,” she said. “This is about your future memory. Quite central to your nervous system and your long-term happiness. And there will be no report about it in any of the local newspapers, if that is what you are afraid of.”
         “We shall see,” he said. “About that.”
         That night, Derrida posed particular difficulties. He stayed late at the library, and it was hot. The thought that some students availed themselves of the university facilities with no particular view to exercise and with no fixed purpose, and at such a time of day, crept in at the back door of his mind like an armed intruder. “Damn it,” he said, and slammed the book shut. He had to know if her phone call had been a practical joke, or if by any chance there was substance to the girl’s claim that you could swim as you saw fit, under the tolerant eye of the campus security, that no-one would harrass you if you did, and that she had been thinking of him simply because it would be downright selfish of her not to.
         He had not brought any swimming attire, not having intended to take her up on the offer. And she had not mentioned anything about clothes.
         He sauntered down to the lawn in front of the Wartenweiler, hot and bothered. He sat down. It was nowhere near midnight yet. He sat on the neatly trimmed lawn for about an hour, focusing his thoughts on Derrida. It was useless. She had destroyed his thought patterns. She had hacked into the fabric of his highly organized mind: she had been there with the bent end of a crochet needle and had started to unravel everything he was hoping one day to believe in. Some students! To think that the taxpayer was subsidizing their attendance at a place like this! And in a country where not everybody had the privilege!
         At this thought, he got up and strode angrily towards the almost Olympic-sized swimming pool. He was going to give her a piece of his mind, at the very least. That is, if she were really to be found at its edge, something he highly doubted.
         It was ten to twelve when he stepped on to the concrete. She was not yet there. He kicked off his sandals, sat down by the poolside and allowed his legs to dangle in. The water was unusually cool for a city pool at that time of year. The university pool was carved into a subterranean base of solid rock; this helped keep its water a few degrees colder than the norm for those parts at all times. Fantastically refreshing on a hot summer night.
         The softly modulated telephone voice behind him: “You are fashionably early,” the nightingale sang with a little hint of laughter at the back of her throat. He looked over his shoulder. “And you didn’t bring any of your other friends,” he observed. “I knew there had to be a catch somewhere.”
         “This is a special occasion,” she announced solemnly. “In celebration of the fact that I almost forgot to remember you, but didn’t.” And she looked directly into his eyes, and started to undo her trinketed Indian print skirt, and allowed it to drop to her feet right in front of his bashful face. He had never met anyone quite so shameless in his life.
         “You are a stranger,” he demurred. “We hardly know each other.”
         “Uh huh,” she smiled wantonly. “Hardly.”
         There was nothing for it but to rise to the occasion. He quickly ripped off his T-shirt and threw it on top of her skirt. She undid her blouse, button by button, refusing all the while to remove her gaze from his navel. He tingled. Blue shorts fell to the ground, revealing a tight sportsman’s pair of underpants ... why in the name of heaven did he have to pick a red pair that morning, he thought, and blushed all the way up to his collarbones. Then he remembered that it was dark, and the floodlights around the swimming pool had for some reason failed to come on. Maybe she was right: maybe the security really did turn a blind eye. It was way too late to turn back now in any event.
         She stood in front of him in her underwear, and gestured towards the back of her bra where she needed it undone. He fumbled cluelessly with the strap; she moved slightly, clearly enjoying the erratic trembling motion of his fingers. Then, in a sudden wave of inspiration, he tugged wildly and pulled the entire thing up over her huge breasts as if it were a T-shirt, tore it right over her shoulders and caught her hair in the hook by accident as he ripped the black lace 38DD push-up bra right over her head, catching a few of her blonde strands in its complicated trap of hooks. She let out a little cry of pain and exploded in a fit of laughter.
         The security guard up on the promenade, pacing slowly up and down with his big Alsatian on the leash, cast a sideways glance down at the pool. She chortled, and waved. The man smiled. “He’s not hurting me, madala,” she laughed. “I am letting myself be hurt!” The man nodded, and turned his gaze back in front of him, continuing to pace with measured steps as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening down below.
         “True professionals,” she smiled in his ear. “The security guards know when to interfere and when not to.”
         “Okay,” he said gravely as he gestured towards her skimpy underpants of black lace. “Ladies first.”
         “Really?” she grinned.
         “Yes, really,” he breathed on her shoulder as he crossed his forearms around her curvy backside, firmly tugging at the little slip of lace and leaving it stuck halfway down her extremely white soft thighs. He stepped back with a little self-satisfied smile, forcing her to finish what he had started. And she never averted her gaze, but stared relentlessly at him, her blue eyes piercing straight into his blue eyes, as she teased the little piece of cloth, slightly torn, inch by inch over her knees, down her shins and on to the concrete under her where she stepped on it with utter disregard in both feet.
         “So, are you guilty yet, white man?” she whispered.
         “Not quite,” he smiled coldly. And he took off his red underpants matter-of-factly, as if he was planning to put on pyjamas and go to bed at a quite regular hour, and folded them with elaborate care and placed them on top of the crumpled heap of Indian print skirt, blue sports shorts, white T-shirt and black buttoned blouse. Ignoring the leaning tower against his tall athletic body, he dove into the swimming pool head first with an almighty splash, and proceeded to swim a ferociously efficient few lengths while the naked girl sat on edge with her long blonde hair tickling her back in the slight after-hours breeze, watching him, wearing only her spiky high heeled sandals.
         Finally she undid their straps and placed them next to the heap of clothes, and slipped into the water. Cold blue ripples of midnight oil engulfed them, their blonde hair darkened with water, their chlorinated eyes burning into each other as their bodies collided and he embraced her tightly. She wrapped her legs around him, kissing him as deeply as he would allow. He slipped in and was trapped instantly, like an eel thrusting impossibly in the jaws of something bigger and far, far hungrier.
         She repeated the question in his ear, blowing hot air on the delicate shell.
         “Are you guilty yet, white man?”
         “Guilty,” he gasped as he uttered the evidence inside her. “Guilty, my lover. Guilty as sin.”

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