Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

Maria carries on with the R304, past the N1 turn-off to Cape Town, direction Malmesbury. Benjy doesn’t say a word, he just gazes ahead of him. His breath is slightly laboured. (She’d hoped he’d outgrown his asthma. Must be the stress. She hopes he has his asthma pump with him.) She thinks: She must give him time to recover his wits. But she finds it near-intolerable — the child clearly suffering some kind of life-threatening crisis and just sitting next to her in silence. The sky is vast and dim, but radiant on the horizon. On the left all trees are sharply delineated against the sky. On the right sunlight and shade alternate on the bare fields. Gradually the clouds disperse. In Malmesbury the sky is grey, as if the whole town is covered in shade. On a town square there are giant bluegums. People on the face of it idling there aimlessly — but no doubt one and all of them harbouring murderous intent and as depressed as hell.

Just outside Malmesbury Benjy suddenly starts crying. Without any warning — one moment he’s still gazing ahead of him in silence and the next moment be erupts in raw sobs. Maria gets such a fright that she almost loses control of the car. Benjy, she exclaims, what’s the matter, darling? But he cries so hard that he can’t utter a word. What is it, she asks, is it the people who want to wipe you out? He doesn’t react. He cries so that strings of slime and slobber stream out of his mouth and nose. There’s no place anywhere to pull off the road. The lovely, bare fields fly past — dark on one side of the road, lighter on the other, with the silver light slanting down on the wheat stubble. After a while he calms down somewhat. Wipes his nose on his sleeve. Gazes ahead of him.

‘Is it the people who are stalking you?’ she asks. He shakes his head. No.

‘Your life’s not in danger?’ she asks. He shakes his head, sniffs. After-sobs shake his body.

‘It was actually all just talk,’ he says, ‘stupid fucking pranks.’

‘Death threats,’ she says, ‘whose idea of a joke is that?!’

He shrugs. ‘Cretinous fuckers,’ he says. ‘They just wanted to like give me a fright.’

Why does it sound so familiar?! When last did she see him like this — her plucky, resourceful child? Systematically all his life overcoming stumbling blocks — alas, mainly stumbling blocks of his own making. Your life is not in danger? she asks again, just to be absolutely sure. He shakes his head. Well, thank God for that, she says. He utters a tiny, wry laugh. Sniffs. Half sobs. They speed past vineyards, past cleared and ploughed fields in various shades of brown: grey-brown, ochre-brown, green-brown, dark-brown with white; the brown broken by the silver sheen of the wheat stubble. They speed past the vast, flat, stretched-out landscape, the sky all before them — from endless horizon to endless horizon — equally wide and stretched-out. Is it the failed business venture? she asks. He shakes his head. She feels tears welling up in her eyes. What is it then? she asks. (From early childhood on he never allowed himself to be coddled or cosied over-much. Nor even comforted. Such a headstrong, independent, stubborn, heart-wrenching child. With the damn impossible father against whom he has to measure himself all his life. Not easy with a father like Andreas — extraordinarily talented, a fabulously successful artist — hard to meet him on his own ground.)

‘I wasn’t made for this,’ he declares abruptly.

‘For what, darling?’ she asks.

‘She dumped me,’ he says.

That is a possibility that’s never occurred to Maria! Love woes. A girl, she says. He nods. Sniffs. What happened ? she asks. (At least it’s a crisis of human dimensions — death threats are so way beyond any comprehensible category.)

‘I’m like finished,’ he says stoically.

‘How come?’ she says. ‘Who’s the girl?”

‘I’ve sort of actually had it,’ he says. ‘She’s fucking wiped me out.’

Now she understands! No wonder his form has assumed more pronounced masculine proportions, although his lashes are still long and thick (like a girl’s), and moist at present.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks, as they approach Moorreesburg.

‘It’s okay.’ He said. ‘I just had to get out of the city. Otherwise I would have fucking like done myself some injury.’

(As bad as that? She’s almost forgotten how bad it can be.)

*

In Moorreesburg they stop to have tea at a combination coffee and craft shop. The place, crammed chock-a-block with gimcrack knick-knacks, fortunately has a fireplace. Maria is thankful for the fire. She is both relieved and disturbed. Relieved that it was only a romantic crisis, disturbed at its intensity.

The girl with whom he fell in love (for the time being anonymous; for now Maria refrains from angling for any further information) used to be the girlfriend of a friend of one of the guys he wanted to go into partnership with. When the friend of the prospective partner discovered what was like going on between Benjy and the girl, he weighed in with his threats. First he saw to it that the prospective partner withdrew from the business venture with Benjy, then he started like threatening Benjy himself. He and a lot of other guys said they were going to like wipe him out if he didn’t leave the girl alone. At first they carried on for a while, Benjy and the girl, he thought it would be okay, the guys would back off, but then they started as in threatening her too, and then she must have got a big fright, because next thing she was back with the guy.

Benjy gazes ahead of him steadily, slides down in his seat as he did in the car, as if wanting to make himself invisible. He is still pale. With great equanimity he insists that he is like fucking wiped out.

Late in the afternoon they drive back to Stellenbosch. Behind them the sun sets in an over-the-top extravagance of colour. That she sees in her rear-view mirror. Nature never holds back — every day the same prodigal spectacle. They arrive in the town at dark.

That evening they eat in a restaurant. Benjy hardly registers what he’s eating or what he’s drinking. His face is still pale, washed clean by grief, by the tears he shed earlier in the day, wide open with hurt. Maria would like to know more about the girl, but all that Benjy says — again and again — is that he can’t believe it. He thought that she was like one hundred percent for him. He can’t believe she dropped him. Not just dropped, she wiped him out. He thinks he’s like finished. He doesn’t know if he can carry on. She realises that there’s no point in even trying to talk about anything else — about the business venture, for instance, which seemed to be such a crisis last time. All other crises clearly now on ice, while he’s dealing with this one major crisis. What can she tell him — these things happen, in a few months you’ll have forgotten her? There’s nothing she can tell him tonight — he is too wounded: in his confidence, in his expectations; his self-image.

He spends the night in the guest house and the next day Maria takes him back to Cape Town. He assures her that he’s okay. As in actually okay, he says. At the corners of his mouth she discerns something of his old, childlike, dogged resolution in the face of obstacle and calamity. But now with a tougher, more masculine cast. Her heart goes out to him, and she is anxious. What’s the use of warning him, what’s the use of calling after him as she drops him: Be careful! Don’t take unnecessary risks! He doesn’t even hear her.

She sends the man a text message when she gets back to town, but it’s too late, he’s already made other arrangements.

*

Her tenant, Joy Park, informs her that she is not well. She has received the results of the series of tests. Her gall bladder has to be removed. Spunky Joy Park, who has never been got under by anything. Because she can’t afford a private hospital, she has to go to King Edward, a state hospital. Heaven help her, she adds, going to that hospital is the worst friggin experience of her life. Conditions are shocking — the wards are over-full, there’s no sanitation. If someone dies during the night, the corpse is removed only late the following morning. The morgue is probably also crowded, she reports. She’ll be lucky to survive this friggin little trip. If she chops off, they’re bound to steal all her valuables and dump her corpse on a trolley along with all the others — the only white among all the dead blacks. It freaks her out just to think of it. She’s never been so humiliated in her life — the only white woman in the ward. The operation’s nothing, it’s the disgrace that she probably won’t survive.