Johann P. Boshoff After a career as teacher and later professional translator, Boshoff (1956) now freelances as both translator and writer. He resides at Rosendal in the Eastern Free State. Apart from various publications in Afrikaans, English works have been included in his book of poetry, Stasies (2002), and in his collection of previously unpublished works, Skryfsels (2004). In 2003 his essay, “Afrikaans in Translation Today”, appeared in Muratho, the journal of the South African Translators’ Institute (SATI).

Silence in Soap

Johann P Boshoff

“Ijo!” It is hard scrubbing plank floors. And the passage is so long. Lydia Mogoera coughs. The air is cold, but she has to keep the door open for the floor to dry. She looks at the floor. She looks at the green soap, the brush in her sinewy slim hand, the bucket with warm water. And the cloth.

The cloth. It used to be Kleinbaas’s old T-shirt. The one he had torn badly while climbing through the bushes on the slopes of Naval Hill one night. He’s different from the other white boys she knows and has known in her life. He is always doing strange things.

Lydia looks up. The passage seems never to end. She feels particularly weak today. And sad. Botlhoko. The name her mother gave her. But she has to work. She needs the money. She has Mpho and Boitumelo to feed and clothe. Her gift and her happiness. And she needs the food she eats at Ounooi’s house.

Ounooi has to work too. She works at the OK Bazaars. Ounooi has Kleinbaas and Kleinnooi to feed and clothe. She and Ounooi must be the same age, because their boys, Mpho and Kleinbaas, are both sixteen. They are still at school. The girls too. Ounooi’s children are at Sentraal at the foot of Naval Hill; her own at Bochabelo High, where there are no hills.

She dips the brush in the water, runs the soap across its hard hair. And scrubs, with the water, soap, old polish and dirt mixing as she makes circles over the planks. She puts the brush down, dips the cloth in the water, squeezes out the excess water, and wipes off the soapy mix forming on the planks. Always careful not to get splinters in her hands or knees. The wooden floor is old.

Slowly she scrubs her way backwards into the house, facing the open front door with the pine tree just visible outside. How pale the sun shines! And look, the sparrows! They never rest, do they?

Kleinbaas’s bedroom door is still closed. School holidays.

A song rises within her, sadly born not of her name, but of everything she does not understand.

Senzeni na? Senzeni na? What have we done? What have we done?

Janneman couldn’t wait for the movie to start its run since he had seen the poster. The poster was poetry. A man photographed from the back, naked, walking out through the gate of a very old city. Francis. From Assisi. Janneman had read that in the Volksblad. Before that, he had no knowledge of this Francis.

That Sunday, before the normal six-day run would have started, he had asked his mother for money to go to the movies. She must have seen the paper too, and that he had put up the picture on the wall. She must have read his mood, because she just looked at him, smiled and gave him the money for his ticket, even though his pocket-money was due only that Saturday. The exams were still on, but her boy always learned for exams, despite his strange behaviour at times.

Janneman felt something beyond expectation that Sunday. And the church services, both morning and evening, intensified the longing within him that he could not describe.

That Monday, after school, he briskly walked into town, to be in time for the matinee. He didn’t mind not having popcorn or a cold drink. After the advertisements, the newsreel, and the previews, it was intermission. This interval seemed far, far longer than at other times. He remained seated. Eventually the house lights went down, and the movie started.

Cloth. Fine cloth draped from the ceiling, it seemed, slowly moving in the breeze, the camera caressing each fold and flutter, slowly moving down, then coming to rest on the face of a young man. A fever glistening like sweat on his forehead. Frame after frame as beautiful as some paintings he had seen in the art books in the school library.

Frame after frame, with the young Francis balancing on the rooftop towards a sparrow. Then walking through a cloth-dyeing workplace, steam rising from the red, blue, green and yellow pits. People stirring colour into the cloth, transforming paleness into brightness.

Eventually, the scene for which Janneman had been waiting opened wide on the screen.

A frail and pale Francis, still very much in a dwaal, ended up standing in the middle of Assisi’s town square. With a crowd staring at him, he started undressing in the sun, facing the open gate. It was as though he, in stripping naked, shed more than mere expensive cloth. It took forever, it seemed, this getting rid of a past that was not of his own making.

Resolutely Francis strode away from the bundle of clothes, people staring at him — neither shocked nor amused. They seemed to have sensed the depth and intensity of the action of the rich merchant’s son.

The rest became very blurry to Janneman. Francis gained a following. There was a beautiful girl too. And the pope had a problem, but in the end accepted him.

He saw the movie every afternoon, except that Thursday, when no one was willing to give or lend him the money for a movie ticket. Not his mother, not Tannie Pieta, not Auntie Anne, no one. Tannie Roestof took pity on him a day later, seeing how miserable the boy was. His mother followed suit that Saturday after work.

And all the while three lines from a song from the movie kept on singing in Janneman’s head, on his tongue, in his heart.

We are God’s children
Of Him we are part
I feel his love awakening in my heart.

It was as though the school holidays became days seen through fine cloth. Janneman felt himself changing. He kept to himself, climbing the slopes of Naval Hill to wander in increasing wonder at the peculiarly pale and dusty bush and veld and almost tame game in the reserve on top of the hill. He steered clear of the gravel roads, where a cloud of dust would rise and hang like a translucent, billowing curtain behind every occasional car, eventually settling somewhere, be it back onto the road or onto the plants lining the road.

He did not mind the chill against his face every time a breeze eased itself through the dusted tokens of that beautifully sad season. The longing in him itself had become a season on the verge of changing from rest into abundance. The shining sun, though pale, hinted at this.

The observatory’s dome he sort of registered. He had once had a look at the moon through the telescope in there. He could not see any man hiding in the moon. Only pale blue parts, called oceans. At least he could always make out the Southern Cross while standing on the porch of their house.

He also sort of registered the huge megaphones fixed against the radio mast at the one end of the hill. It was always amazing how far and penetrating the sound of the siren sounded every night at nine; they sometimes even heard it at out at the drive-in. Night after night it signalled the streets of white Bloemfontein to be cleared of all black people without passes.

We are God’s children
Of Him we are part.

The longer he looked at them, the more the megaphones became grotesque trumpets, signalling what? Wrong. Not right. They signalled that something was wrong within him too, something for which he was not to be blamed, but which was not right. For which he felt guilt, for which his compulsion became to say sorry. A sadness greater than his limited understanding settled on his heart like dust after a breeze.

As he dropped definitely towards the western horizon, Janneman gathered speed. The skies turned from pale blue to pale yellow, and then crashed in a cascade of orange, then pink and finally violet. Janneman knew he had better climb down the slope before the bushes became indistinguishable silhouettes. Down the slope, before another shirt got torn from his not being able to distinguish one branch from another in the dusk and enveloping dark.

The curtains do not move, though the stripped branches of the tree moan and squeak in the morning breeze. The sun attempts to penetrate the fibre at the top of the curtains, then gently starts slipping down, trying to find a place to penetrate the bedroom.

On the bed the weight of many blankets helps keep the winter cold away from the boy’s slim body, his body heat trapped. There is sweat on his brow. He has a temperature or must have had a feverish struggle with the unkind kindness of the many blankets. The sweat glistens as the sun filters through the curtains.

Then he gasps for air. Sits up. Stares somewhat wildly at the curtain. Somewhere outside a sparrow stutters. He lifts himself from the entrapment, gets up and unsteadily leans over towards the window. His slim hands part the curtains. His dark eyes catch a glimpse of a restless sparrow.

The crisp winter’s morning accepts the brief invitation as Janneman opens the window, takes a few breaths of air, and then closes it again. On turning around, he notices the Bible on his desk and the centrefold, taken from Personality, put up against the wall above it, and the candle. There is Saint Francis, departing from Assisi. Naked. In the foreground, a heap of clothes.

The all-encompassing sadness Janneman had felt the day before returns. The accompanying feelings as well. And also the compulsion to act.

His automatic inner retaliation is the song that yet again starts within his heart of hearts, and then explodes in his mind:

We are God’s children
Of Him we are part
I feel his love awakening in my heart.

Senzeni na? Senzeni na?

Sung song meets unsung song, neither singer knowing.

Janneman, in a dwaal.

Quietly he opens the bedroom door. The cold air in the passage crawls over his bare feet into the room. Lydia stops her singing.

“Môre, Kleinbaas,” she greets the boy standing awkwardly in the door. Bare feet. Flannel pyjamas. Eyes with so much hurt in them that it startles her, eyes that stare at her and into her and beyond her. He is strange, with a strangeness that started deepening when the picture first appeared on his wall and the candle on the desk below it. Why, why does he not greet me back, ask for coffee, anything?

Janneman sees Lydia. Really sees her. Her frail body, her right hand resting somewhat anxiously on the scrubbing brush. The cloth lying limp beside the bucket. The soap a splash of green on the brown planks. And he sees her eyes. He really sees her eyes, and the eyes of all her people in them and beyond them. He sees the question behind the question, and does not understand it, nor does he suspect an answer.

“Kleinbaas?” is all she can manage before she realises that the hurt has become tears. No sobs, nothing. Just tears dripping down his young cheeks as he steps into the passage onto the drying, yet still wet, planks. He goes down on his haunches in front of her, softening the light from the front door. Then he leans forward with his hands stretched out towards her. She reciprocates for no reason at all. He gently takes her soapy hands. Weeping still, he bends over and kisses the soap off her delicate hands.

Over and over he says that he is sorry: “Ek’s jammer, Lydia. Ek is so jammer.” Sorry what for, he does not know.

And she forgives the boy. For what, she does not know.

And Janneman tastes the forgiveness in the soap. He departs from the past, leaving behind something like a heap of redundant clothes.


LitNet: 18 March 2004

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