During winter, 2008, many migrants were attacked, killed and burnt out of their homes in Cape Town and other cities in South Africa. Some of the migrants, most of them illegal, were taken in by churches and provided with food and bedrolls in church halls. Others were given refuge by private families.
Their mother has made up her mind: the Congolese man is not invited for coffee & cake and that’s final. Sunday afternoon and the family has gathered in the sunroom: Ma, Pa, Sissie and Stoney. It doesn’t happen very often.
It just doesn’t feel right. That’s all, she says.
Sissie goes rigid in her wheelchair. If her foot could tap up and down, it would’ve. That’s certainly not all there is to it as their mother tries to intimate.
Across the orchard of apricot trees the shed in the backyard has been fixed-up for Benjamin Bienfait. There is no toilet, at night and in the mornings he slips through the kitchen to do his ablutions in the second bathroom. Quiet as a mouse, you wouldn’t hear the backdoor open or close, at most the flush of the toilet. The other day Stoney discovered a wiry pubic hair on the toilet seat, figured that it doesn’t belong to any of the Steenkamps and wiped it up with a sheet of Baby Soft.
Stoney promised that he’ll make a special Eastern European apple cake with crème anglaise, which is, he added quickly, nothing more but old-fashioned custard. He has no intention being a show-off with his cooking even though he realises how skilled you need to be for a proper crème anglaise. Not too thick and not too runny and never over-sweet. The texture has to be silky. If you end up with a lump as big as a rice kernel, you have to start all over again.
Benjamin Bienfait in the shed – everybody senses the presence of the man across the apricot orchard.
I just gave hom granny Ansie’s old one, you know, the mother says about Benjamin who’d come to ask for a Bible. It’s not in French I know, she told him, I didn’t want him to think I’m stupid. He simply said, no, that’s all right.
This time of the year, she says, it makes her sad to watch the beautiful orange of the apricot tree leaves turn brown and then drop to the ground and remain there right through winter, cold and damp. She doesn’t venture into the backyard anymore.
I think he’s got a very musical name, Sissie says.
Stoney noticed Sissie had gulped down a pill and since then she’s recovered. She reckons she’s the only one who knows everything about Benjamin. That every single one of his belongings went up in fire in Langa. Everything, his runners the lot. That he rented a tiny shed in that township too. That he’s left with what his wearing, that’s it. And if he returns, they’ll kill him. He also sends all his savings to his sister in the refugee camp of Kakuma in Kenia, that’s something she knows for a fact. And his sister’s the last one left of his family. The rest has been wiped out in the war in the DRC.
I wonder if any of you remember the story of the man who comes to knock at the door late at night to ask for a fish, Sissie has abruptly swung her wheelchair around to face all of them. Will you send him away empty-handed? He’s only 21 you know, that’s all.
Well, we haven’t sent hom away at all. He’s staying with us, isn’t he, their mother replies. Sy picks at a nail on her left hand. She clearly finds the Congolese man in their backyard disturbing.
Stoney has read something about a woman in a story by Roberto Bolaño, a Chilean writer who has since died. In the story Bolaño tells of how absent the woman always seemed. If she said halo, it was as if she spoke from another, distant place. And if she looked at her husband that too seemed to come from a faraway, distant direction.
Stoney used to think of his mother in this way. Yet since the Congolese man has moved in, she started talking. It’s as if she’s suddenly got the spirit.
And how long is he intending to stay, she wants to know from Sissie.
‘Till he has to, Ma, she says.
It has become apparent to Stoney how much power Sissie has acquired at home the last year or so. At the back next to the swimming-pool she let Benjamin plant chrysanthemums: yellow and brown ones. He’s got a green thumb, she said.
.
Their mother would stand on the back step looking out, the Dobermann at her side and say: I have to admit, it’s never looked as good.
All Sissie’s doing. She was alone at home the day the bell rang and she dared to open. She said she felt strong with the Dobermann there and all. That’s the new Sissie. She had Benjamin digging up the flower-beds in no time. At lunch she let him have a sandwich and a Coke. They chatted away, there’s no-one else for her, is there.
In the sunroom nobody has anything to say about the story of the man and the fish. She manipulates them, makes them feel guilty: they know they neglect her.
*
When Stoney gets up for the coffee and cake, his mother follows.
How many cake plates are you putting out?
I guess four only, Ma. She nods, her eyes sharp and clear.
Hy goes to set out the cake plates with cake forks and cups on the coffee table in the sunroom. Then he returns for the coffee and hot milk and his apple cake.
So he’s not coming, Sissie says when she notices there’re only four of everything.
I think his reading his Bible, their father says.
Ag don’t be stupid, Pa. You lot have decided Benjamin is not coming, all on the sly. Don’t bother about asking Sissie, she doesn’t count.
Listen Sis, you should ask yourself whether he’s going to feel at home here amongst us. We’ve got our way of doing things, you know. For a start: we won’t be able to speak Afrikaans.
Pa you speak English all day at the office.
Well, I just thought it would be nice to have the family all by itself for a change.
Across the backyard and through the open kitchen door Benjamin’s music drifts towards them. The Dobermann doesn’t even bother to bark, simply lifts his head and looks in the direction of the music, wet tongue lolling, then back towards Sissie in her wheelchair.
The dog, Stoney thinks, it too has become hers. Waits on her commands all the time. Her word has become law, the dog won’t even listen to Pa anymore.
You’re all so selfish. Benjamin could have been with us right now. We can learn something from him, you know.
You’re being silly now, Sis. You’re starting to annoy me. We do what we can, all of us here in Cape Town. What bothers me, is that he’s invaded our privacy. I don’t feel at home anymore in my own backyard. Can’t help it, I was born like that. You won’t get me any other way. What is that music he’s playing all the time?
It’s Soukous, Ma. Congolese music. That’s what I mean, see, we can learn something from him.
So why don’t you take your piece of cake and join him in the shed, why don’t you do that if that’s what you want. He’s not one of us Sissie, we don’t know the man at all, their father says.
I can’t believe all of you. Bunch of hypocrites! That’s what you are. She buries her face in her hands. Tears will flow, Stoney knows her well. The Dobermann doesn’t take his eyes off her.
Leave her alone now, Pa, Stoney says and cuts the moist, bronze cake into robust squares. He baked the apple cake in a square tin, it had sunken slightly in the middle to form its own rich syrup.
I got the recipe from a Jewish friend of mine. It’s from her aunt on her mother’s side, passed on through the years. Hy pours the pale yellow custard – like a dream – on each square, passes a cake fork and a napkin: here, Ma.
You and your old Jewish recipes, Sissie hisses through her fingers.
Everyone looks up at her. And looks. And nobody says a word.
*
Only him and his father are still up. They both sit reading. They’ve been watching the late edition of Aljazeera news. Bishop Tutu had been to Gaza. He says it’s a disgrace what’s happening there. It’s like a stain.
When his father senses that he’s staring at him, he looks up from under the reading lamp.
Pa, you’ve read Waiting for the barbarian, haven’t you?
Not bad. But too sombre for me. All his books are like that. I don’t need that in my life.
You know Pa, I only realise now that JM Coetzee got the title of his book from a Greek poet, from Cavafis, one of the great poets of the twentieth century. Cavafis had a perfect sense of rhythm and never used metaphors or similes. Listen to this. It’s from Waiting for the Barbarians:
Why this sudden unrest and confusion?
(How solemn their faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
And all return to their homes, so deep in thought?
Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
Some people arrived from the frontiers,
And they said there are no longer any barbarians.
And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
Stoney frowns: what do you think of that, Pa? Under the circumstances?
eben venter’s website is here
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