Ingrid Winterbach - It Might Get Loud

Gradually the landscape starts changing. He drives through a valley with farmlands, vineyards, ringed by high mountains with shadowy, rocky crevices.

Just before De Doorns, on the left of the road, is an extensive township. Carpets are hung out on the fence, laundry. Dogs, children, little groups of young people loitering. In the white town in the vicinity of some college there is an oasis of green, in stark contrast to the cheerless township. The constriction in his chest intensifies as he approaches his destination. Long time no hear from Josias. He hopes it means that things are more or less okay with Iggy.

In Worcester the houses lining the main road have tree-filled gardens. Palm trees. A bit further there is even a mall. One of these days they’ll plonk down a casino or an even bigger mall here on this vast plain between the mountains — pleated, looks as if they were scattered by a heedless hand. Lots of trees. He can hardly distinguish between indigenous and exotic. Juliana knows everything: the name of every little bush, shrub and tree. The name of every bird in the sky and fish in the sea. Don’t you feel any thing for nature? she asked. Didn’t your father walk in the veld with you? Ye-es, he said. (Visiting their grandmother and grandfather in a town, wide sandy streets. A field with a windsock. Their father pointing out things to them. Iggy so excited about everything. With his high, elated voice and his stand-up-straight hair. Pig’s bristle, their mother said, rubbing over his head.)

Them Crooked Vultures sing: ‘Can’t afford to lose my head, can’t afford to lose my cool.’ If only Iggy is okay. If only he hasn’t lost the plot totally , as would appear from his letters. (That he thinks God is turning him into a woman is fuck knows the cherry on the cake.)

If Karl could talk to Iggy himself just once , he’d be able to judge for himself. Perhaps Iggy’s come to his senses since writing the letter. Okay, he must take Iggy away from there — the Josias-guy made that clear in no uncertain terms. But where to? The Lord only knows. He’s waited too long. He should have realised something was amiss when Iggy gave up his job and his digs in the city. Iggy was initially so enthused about the new place! And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, Josias phoned him. And in next to no time it was pretty obvious that Iggy had lost the plot.

SHORTLY BEFORE HER DEPARTURE, Maria Volschenk pays Tobie Fouché another visit. She decides not to let him know in advance. Perhaps if she just turned up, she could catch him unawares and leave him less time to come up with some cock-and-bull story. Catch him with his guard down, before he’s had a chance to muster his defences.

Tobie is indeed surprised to see her. Not only is he surprised, but he is also surprisingly warm. And evidently considerably pickled. Come in, come in, he cordially invites her in.

He goes ahead, leads her to the kitchen. He is not alone. He and a woman are sitting at the kitchen table drinking. Bottles of wine on the table, a dish of olives. No evidence of a more substantial meal, which probably explains Tobie’s inebriation.

Maria doesn’t know the woman at all. Tobie introduces her to Maria as Margaretha Engelen, but provides no other indication of her status: friend, colleague, lover.

A big woman, lightly freckled, red-blonde hair. Her hair in a long plait. She looks like some Wagner soprano who could stride onstage now as a Brünhilde with flaming sword, gleaming helmet and breastplate. Her greeting is not friendly; her face is virtually expressionless.

Maria has a strong suspicion that she’s interrupting a conversation. An intense conversation, to judge by Tobie’s condition. In all likelihood about Sofie. She doesn’t like Tobie’s discussing Sofie with a stranger, but if she is being talked about, Maria wants to hear.

Tobie is obviously far gone. As tipsy and tearful as this she’s never seen him. Positively maudlin.

He pours her a large glass of wine (his hand not altogether steady). He has not introduced Maria as Sofie’s sister. For a while the three of them drink in silence. Tobie gazes in front of him forlornly, the woman stares fixedly and implacably ahead of her (moments before curtain-rise, before she has to stride onstage and let rip with her foghorn of a voice, sword brandished).

‘Ye-es,’ Tobie says suddenly. ‘Sofie, Sofie, what I wouldn’t give to have you back for just a few hours.’

Maria turns ice-cold, the woman sits with impassive face.

‘Sofie, Sofie,’ Tobie continues, ‘how could I have known, what should I have done differently? Why did you no longer trust me?’

Good Lord, no, for Tobie to be addressing Sofie directly is one too many for Maria.

‘In what way did Sofie no longer trust you, Tobie?’ she asks cautiously, afraid of making him self-conscious so that he clams up again, now that there would seem to be important things floating to the surface. But she needn’t have been scared of inhibiting Tobie, because it looks as if he actually welcomes the question, in fact he seems to be welcoming Maria’s presence, and that, she knows for certain, has seldom or ever been the case previously. From the word go there had been little love lost between her and Tobie.

Sofie no longer took him into her confidence, he says, he thinks she no longer respected him. Perhaps she never did. He can hardly bear living with the thought — that she’s dead is bad, it’s terrible — but that she didn’t respect him as person or as poet (and by now his tears are flowing freely) — he doesn’t know if he can live with that.

Now everything is released in an unstoppable torrent. What he says contradicts everything he said at their previous meeting. It looks as if he’s uttering anything that surfaces in his mind. None of his previous cautious hedgings and attempts at self-justification.

Sofie had no respect for him, says Tobie. (And rightly so, thinks Maria.) She spoke to him less and less. He no longer knew how to get through to her. She no longer wanted to show him her work or discuss it with him, not that she’d ever really done that but now definitely no longer. It seemed as if she no longer trusted him. Towards the end she turned away from him completely, she hardly spoke to him. (Last time he claimed that they had no secrets from each other; she thought that wasn’t true.)

The woman remains expressionless. She drinks at a steady rate. As soon as Tobie’s glass is empty, she wordlessly pushes the bottle in his direction. He pours so vigorously that the liquid sloshes over the rim of the glass. Not once does the woman glance in Maria’s direction or address her.

Does he have any idea what Sofie was working at towards the end? Maria asks warily. (Still scared of interrupting his spate of words. Perhaps she can learn some things tonight that she otherwise never would.)

He doesn’t know , that’s the thing, says Tobie. She was secretive. She hardly allowed him into her workspace any more. He knows she was working at something , because she was working even longer hours than usual. Sometimes she didn’t even come to bed. She was like someone with a mission. She was pale, she was thin. Shortly before her death she left here with a plastic bag full of stuff to go and dump somewhere. She offered no explanation. Afterwards he realised it must have been everything that she’d been working at recently. He should have realised that she was heading for something. But he no longer felt free to ask her about anything.

Does he have any inkling of what she was reading at that time? asks Maria.

No, he doesn’t know that either. She took a whole lot of books back to the library. Wiped out all traces of whatever she was working at. She would in any case no longer read his poems, says Tobie. She probably thought he was a lousy poet. Perhaps she’d always thought it, just didn’t show it. (Never anything wrong with Sofie’s judgement, thinks Maria.)