Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

Thus it came to pass that not only the person, but also his friends, started making questionable comments to me, and clearly were laughing at me behind my back and hatching plans to bring about my ruin.

This person, of whom I dare not mention the name, but to whom I shall henceforth refer as the Headman, thus gradually cast his net wider and wider. He involved his friends and followers in his iniquitous scheme to harm me, and later even to cause me bodily injury and destroy my soul. Soul murder was clearly his objective.

He started instructing his henchmen, as I shall henceforth refer to his friends and followers, to spy on me, to follow me wherever I went, and to level insults and later even obscenities at me.

And at last, as a final measure, they were instructed to subject me physically to whatever abominable deeds it pleased them to commit upon me. I do not now want to elaborate on the manifold ways in which I — my body — was delivered to them for their unbridled pleasure and use.

The mere thought, the memory of the agony inflicted upon my body and soul over an extended period, of the revolting ways in which body and soul were harrowed and abused, is enough to cast a dark cloud over my mind and to oppress my spirit anew.

My body was so tormented, I was so abased, that eventually I started wishing rather to be dead. Through the henchmen’s bestial relations with me, through the constant mockery and vilification directed at me, my spirit gradually started to fall asunder and my body to weaken beyond recognition.

As a consequence of these violent assaults of a sexual nature my other organs also started manifesting symptoms of illness. I experienced extreme pain in my intestines, my gullet sometimes felt lacerated and my ribs as if some of them were cracked.

Even the birds in the trees (and I now understand that they are the souls of the dead) eventually started taunting me. Almost insufferable, their day-long shrill mockery.

As I have said, I started longing intensely to be dead rather than to be subjected any longer to this devilish plot and these abominable practices.

In this manner a comprehensive effort was made to inflict irreparable damage upon my soul — also and especially through the licentious use of my body like that of a harlot.

Initially I thought that God was on the side of the Headman. That He was also one of those tormenting me. Naturally the suspicion that God had turned against me caused me infinite spiritual distress. It almost deprived me of my last morsel of strength. If everybody was against me, and God had also taken a seat with the scornful and the abusers, I realised that I had no refuge, or even a reason to carry on living.

But gradually, very gradually, initially through all kinds of subtle signs, God started revealing his true nature to me.

In time I achieved the insight that although the human being, like God, possesses nerves, human nerves differ from the nerves of God.

Human nerves are like fine filaments, very very fine. But God is exclusively nerves. These nerves of God connect him to everything in the whole of his creation. But where human nerves are finite, God’s nerves are infinite. There is no end to the nerves of God. They are fine, as the finest filaments, a thousandfold finer than human nerves, and infinitely more in number than human nerves. Through his nerves, furthermore, God can transform Himself into anything. His nerves enable God to perform feats far beyond the powers of comprehension of most people.

Now it gradually dawned upon me that my nerves, because they had for so long suffered a state of near-intolerable sensitivity, had started having an effect on God’s nerves.

My nerves interacted with God’s nerves — this intensified state of my nerves had in the long run started attracting God’s nerves to me. My exceptional spiritual and physical pain had gradually caused God’s nerves to focus on me, as a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun on a focal point.

I was ill for a long time, I endured bitter agony, my gullet at times felt lacerated, as I have mentioned, at times I could imagine that I had swallowed a portion of it while eating, at times it felt as if I had no lungs, so painful was my breathing, but time after time, so I started experiencing it, my damaged, tormented organs were healed again by God.

I started to realise that my agony was not in vain, but that God had started to elect me and that He had a plan with my life.

I think, indeed I know for a certainty, that God is transforming me for a higher purpose. God is turning me into a woman, that is the sign that He has given me. As soon as the transformation is complete, I will be invincible, and that will be the end of the Headman and his corrupt dominion. To that I have been called, to that God has elected me.

My dear brother, Iggy writes, I write these things to you so that you should be informed of all that I have had to endure the last few months, but also so that you should not despair on my behalf, because as you can see, I am with the help of God overcoming my lamentable circumstances. I hope soon to emerge triumphant from them, strengthened in my resolve, and inspired for the task to which God has elected me.

He can’t read any further, thinks Karl. Later, he’ll read the rest later. For the time being it’s enough. It is worse than anything he could have imagined.

HOLY FUCK, THINKS KARL, this he wasn’t prepared for. God turning Iggy into a woman! Does Iggy really believe it? That must explain the woman’s clothing. Who can blame the fucking Josias-guy for thinking Iggy’s lost his marbles? But what if just half, just a fraction, just a grain of what Iggy says is true, however far-fetched and off-the-wall it sounds? What if the man is some kind of evil-doer and has done just something to trigger this condition in Iggy? (The psychic did after all sense a place with unholy goings-on.)

What further gobsmacks Karl is that one would never be able to tell from Iggy’s command of language how bombed-out his mind is. (Iggy used to write beautiful essays at school, for which he was always given a hundred percent; their mother was so proud.)

He has a whole-wheat sandwich for lunch and drinks a cup of coffee. The place is unobjectionable (the toilets are clean and the waitress’s nails are clean and the cutlery is clean), and the service is good. There’s a pergola and hollyhocks. When last did he see hollyhocks? In the garden of his grandfather and grandmother’s house in the country? (The grass had a hot smell after it had been mown. He and Iggy played with tiny plastic animals in a zinc bath outside.) The toilet is in a little white-washed outbuilding in the big back yard. It’s bloody hot. He is tense because he expects a call from Josias at any moment.

At twenty past two he gets a text message.

Meet me at half-past three in the cemetery. I have information that you would like to have. Come on your own. Stop at the main entrance and walk to the nearest big cypress. J. ps don’t be late I can’t wait.

J. Who the hell is J? Joachim with the beetroot claw — does he have something more to tell Karl, is he stalking him from town to town now? The Josias chap? Josias when last heard of was in Cape Town on his farm. Chances are slim that he would turn up here now out of the blue just to give Karl some information. And what kind of information? Information regarding Iggy? Should he take any notice of this message if he doesn’t know who the person is? Why should he come on his own — who would he have gone with in any case?

And before long his phone duly rings. It’s Josias, as he feared. Is he playing games with him, the man demands, does Karl believe the situation isn’t serious, does he think that every day longer that Ignatius stays with them doesn’t make one hell of a difference? Doesn’t he realise that he should get his arse in gear, how much longer can it possibly take him to get here?