Jean Meiring is doing a post-graduate degree in Law.

The Visit

Jean Meiring

I hadn’t meant to kill him.

He arrived one dusty day in early January four years ago. Khaki shorts crowned his spindly legs like lampshades. Pa nodded in my general direction; I took the threadbare suitcase from his tight hand. As if by some unspoken command, he followed me to his new room. Ma had moved the Singer to the alcove off the dining room. Shame, I thought, he’s going to share a wall with the toilet. Clank Town.

School would start two weeks later. Another few days of glorious freedom. Sarie and I showed him the farm. Frans was busy helping Pa with the ostriches. Or practising kicking the rugby ball over the house. He was going into his final year at school. He ignored us.

Tommie spoke very little. Ma had warned us that he “had been through a lot”. She mouthed this phrase almost voicelessly. And added, darkly: “Don’t force him to play if he doesn’t want to. Don’t force him to talk or sing or swim. Or anything.”

At first he tagged along, just watching me and Sarie. On the third day a change suddenly came over him. We were walking to the dam on the town side of the farm. As we passed the tree which Pa jokingly used to call the “slave tree” - on Fridays the labourers gathered there to be paid - he stopped and urgently beckoned us back.

He pointed to the upturned hand of branches. “Let’s build a treehouse.”

Frans burst into laughter, which became a snarl, as I raised the idea at dinner. Pa made as if he hadn’t heard, piercing the paper with his eyes. Ma considered it with her entire face, almost as if she were chewing on a particularly tough strip of meat.

Four aching days later, there it was. The morning after we had brought the idea up, Pa had come around; he commandeered some of the labourers’ children to help. “Take some of the bigger off-cuts from behind the tractor shed. There are nails in the store-room. Be careful. I am not rushing any of you to hospital.”

Gradually, as the bits and pieces of wood and hardboard transformed themselves into a house, Tommie became more and more excited. He worked like an ant. During lunch and cooldrink breaks, Sarie and I would lie in the shade of the tree, while he hammered rhythmically away, a sole drummer calling upon his gods.

“Can we sleep in the treehouse tonight, Pa?”

His answer came quickly. “No, I am not rushing any of you to hospital.”

I turned away from Pa, to look at his face. His eyes had become murky. Milk of magnesia.

The house was dead quiet. Pa and Ma were asleep. I padded gingerly down the passageway, trying my hardest to avoid the creaky spots. But every now and again a floorboard would gasp. What daring, they mocked. What savvy, I silently retorted.

Abandoning stealth, I walked quite naturally to the toilet at the bottom of the passageway, opened the door and closed it again behind me. I had an imaginary pee and pulled the chain. It rattled rustily. I pulled again. And a third time. The sound seemed as much a part of the nocturnal silence as clouds are part of the sky.

When I emerged, there he was. Grinning.

The moon was like a plate from Ouma’s best set of china - the set with the mauve veins delicately etched across it. We peered at it through the window of the tree house. Wisps of cloud brushed across. Ma wiping the plate clean.

We were as quiet as mice. The wind kept us huddled together. It whistled through our little house, as if cooling it off for the coming day, providing respite from tomorrow’s unrelenting sun.

“Jesus didn’t really have a mother or a father, did he?”

I nodded. I didn’t know what my own nodding meant. Whether I was agreeing or disagreeing.

“The Bible says so.”

I nodded again.

The sun was just beginning to redden the horizon, when a roar went up. We were clutching at each other like a pair of dying praying mantises. Frans pulled us apart. His face was unshaven. He looked as if he was wearing a bristly mask, the face-paint of anger.

“Pa wants you in the kitchen now.”

It was his fault. Pa said he had known all along the stupid idea of Ma’s would bring bad influences into the house. Pa’s voice adopted the inflections of Dominee Brand.

“He was born the product of sin. He carries sin around with him in his bones. We have done our Christian duty.”

Frans stood with his fingers interlocked, like a deacon praying for seven fat years.

Pa said Frans should go with Tommie. He had only till the end of the day to break it down. Tomorrow morning the orphanage would fetch him again.

It was three o’clock when Frans came hurtling ashen-faced into the yard. Somehow he looked ancient, as if he bore the world’s cares on his shoulders. I didn’t wait to hear what he so desperately needed to tell me.

When I arrived at the slave tree, I saw him lying face down in the dust, with his arms outstretched, as if he had attempted to fly.

boontoe

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