Bloodlines (64 page)

“I’ll stay here with the children,” she said. “I think you and Michaela should meet first.”

“No way,” I replied. “You’re coming with me, and so are Sally and Greg. We came as a family, and we’re going to meet my mother as a family.” I turned to Penya. “There’s no reason why we can’t all go, is there?”

“Of course not,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

“We’re all going,” I said. “Let’s collect the kids.”

We went out to the Jeep, Penya whistled for the dogs, and helped the older dog, Wally, up onto the tailgate. Starburst, the younger, made the leap on his own. I sat in front with Penya; Dariya and the children sat in the back seat. We drove out of Cleo’s Retreat and up a steep and winding single-lane road to the top of Mount Lebanon and Cleopatra Mountain. I turned to look at my family and the two dogs in the back, nosing the air.

“How is this for you, uncle?” asked Penya, glancing curiously at me.

“More than strange,” I said. “It feels as if I’ve stepped into someone else’s life. A few months ago I didn’t know I had a mother. And I’ve always been an only child. One moment I feel like rejoicing because I once had a brother; the next, I find myself grieving because he died before I knew he existed. And then there are moment when it’s simply enough to enjoy being your uncle. These are big changes, Penya, and I will get used to them with time, but it does feel very strange. I think you have the advantage, having known about us.”

“I don’t feel it as an advantage,” he said. “I’m just very happy that you’ve all come. And I know that my grandmother can’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t say I remember her,” I said. “But not being there when we arrived is a strange way of showing how eager she is to see us.”

Penya said nothing.

“Where are we going?” I asked eventually.

“It’s a ten-minute drive,” he said over the roar of the engine, “and it’s steep.”

He stopped the car, put it into four wheel drive, and we made our way up the hill. We passed only one other inhabited area—the Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse, a small guest lodge that was famed, and rightly so, we discovered, for its sumptuous gourmet meals. The owners were friends of my mother’s, and Penya said it was the last working farm before entering the protected natural areas of the KwaZulu-Natal Reserve.

Eventually we came to a boom across the road, a little guard hut, and a sign for the Highmoor Nature Reserve. Penya greeted the guard and they spoke briefly. The man doffed his hat, gave us a shy, tentative smile, and raised the boom. There was a sign on the guardhouse prohibiting dogs, but he made no comment about our passengers and I had the sense that he knew who we were and why we were there. We drove into the empty parking lot and Penya stopped the car. He opened the tailgate and both dogs jumped down and waited, watching him.

“Let’s go,” he said. He pointed toward a low hill. I could see nothing beyond it, but the beginning of a path was visible. “Wally and Starburst know the way.” He smiled at us, a wide, open smile, and he nodded sagely. “I think you will enjoy the walk,” he said, and led the way up the path.

The fact that we had come halfway around the globe to meet my mother was apparently not enough for her. She was going to make us walk through the wilderness to reach her. I was so completely out of my element, and the situation was so strange, so outrageous, that any anger I might have felt was swept aside, and the sense that I was being manipulated seemed to evaporate. Perhaps, I thought, that’s the sign of successful manipulation.

The dogs waited expectantly for us at each turn, and then leaped ahead. They ran forward a few hundred yards, where Wally would wait while Starburst came back to ensure that we were following, ready to lead on to the next curve in the path. When we reached the top of the first hill and saw where the path led, I had to stop to take in what lay before me.

In the far distance was the jagged silhouette of the Drakensberg, a six hundred mile escarpment of basalt and granite, rising in places to almost twelve thousand feet. On one side I could identify Giant’s Castle and the outline of a huge supine figure, with raised head, chest and legs. But between where we were and the far distance were the grassy sloping hillsides of the Kleinberg, the little berg, the
highveld
that extended to the horizon. The yellow, light-brown grasses, with hints of lilac and green, were like a waving tapestry that had been laid over the undulating landscape, and it was broken only by small ponds and their waterbirds, and by the streams that led into them. Silence seemed to have descended over the landscape like a mist, blocking out all but the sound of the wind through the grass. The sun was warm, and the brightness of the late afternoon light made me glad that I wore my sunglasses.

I breathed in the African
highveld
, and I tasted and felt the vast openness of the country as it entered my lungs. It was sweet and rich from the grasses and the soil, and it contained the acrid odor of distant burns. I sighed deeply, and gave myself over to it. There was little we could do but follow the dogs.

Aside from several hikers camped out in the distance, and a few bird watchers looking for bearded eagles, the area was deserted. The path meandered back and forth across the hills, at times climbing steeply. The dogs led the way over several small bridges. One spanned a brushy ravine, another crossed a narrow stream; a third, longer bridge took us over an area where flowing water encountered a broad expanse of flat granite and emptied itself out across the hillside, the fast, thin flow of liquid over the rocks blindingly bright, flashing and glinting in the sun.

The path divided in several places, but the side paths seemed eventually to reunite with the main track, and Starburst made sure that we were following his lead. The
veld
was dotted with small ponds that had formed in low- lying depressions, and they were surrounded by reeds and tall grasses. The air was so clear and the silence so absolute that as I watched water birds taking off from a pond in the distance, I saw the surface ripple, and heard the delayed slapping of wings on the water as they flapped their way into the air.

The children raced ahead, following the dogs, and Dariya and I walked hand in hand along the path, mesmerized by the beauty and serenity of the landscape.

“We’re almost there,” said Penya.

Eventually the dogs took a detour off the main path and we followed them up a hill, to a point where the incline was steep enough that the trail had been cut into the hillside. The view on one side was blocked by the rocky hill itself, but on the other side the view expanded as the path climbed, and we seemed to be at the highest point. Just before the summit of the hill the path turned sharply to the right, and as I came around the corner, Starburst was standing directly in front of me, facing a ledge of rock overhanging the hillside. Small boulders dotted the ledge, and on one of them, looking out over the
veld
, was a woman. Wally sat beside her, and she rested her hand on his broad head. She sat with her back to us, a narrow figure with slightly rounded shoulders. She was hatless, and the sunlight shone against gray hair, which was cut short in the back.

“Penya,” whispered Greg, pulling at his shirtsleeve, “is that our grandmother?”

“It is,” he said, smiling, “and she’s waiting just for you.”

Greg and Sally looked at each other, and together they ran towards the seated figure, shouting. Sally’s hair was wild about her head, cheeks pink with excitement, and her eyes gleaming. And Greg, my dark-haired boy, three steps behind, laughing—aware as always of everything—the tension, the barking dogs, the madness of the situation, the excitement, and his sister’s untrammeled joy.

“Grandma! Grandma!” they yelled as they approached her, and she rose in alarm at the noise.

When she saw them running towards her she dropped to one knee, and when they reached her she put her arms around both of them and they all hugged each other, and I saw that she was breathing the smell of their skin and their hair.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered.

After a while the children extricated themselves and Greg took her hand to help her up. We stood and looked at each other. She may have once been beautiful, but I recognized none of what was in my memory. She was thin, with a determined mouth, and a face heavily lined by the sun.

“Steven,” she said, “you’re the image of your father.”

She stretched out a hand to touch my cheek, and then leaned forward and put her other arm about my neck. It was a brief embrace, which I received stiffly, arms at my sides, and then, as she released me, I raised one hand to touch her shoulder. She smiled.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and turned to Dariya, who stood silently beside me. “Tell me, how was your time with Khabazela?” she asked.

“He was wonderful with us,” answered Dariya. “Thanks for suggesting that we meet with him. It was quite an education.”

“Yes,” she said. “That was my hope. And now that you’re here, I want to learn all about you.”

“I think we have plenty of time for that,” I said.

Dariya placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder and stepped forward, and the two women embraced.

“Thank you, Dariya,” I heard my mother whisper, “for helping to make this happen.”

I stood to one side, and Dariya, held by my mother, turned her head, searching for me. When she found me she looked at me and smiled, and I had no difficulty understanding the words she silently mouthed.

“I love you,” she said.

Tears were streaming down my cheeks, although I couldn’t have said why I was crying. It could have been resignation—maybe I was finally coming to understand that there would be no reconciliation as I had imagined it, no real apology or understanding; that any happy ending would be different from the one I had imagined.

For the next few days we stayed close to the farm. We took long walks, sat up late after the children were in bed, talking about the past we had lost. One day we left the farm at dawn and spent a long day on the Durban beach. Khabazela and Miriam were due to visit at the end of the week, along with all the children and grandchildren, and my mother planned to host a huge
braaivleis
, a barbecue, and to invite her friends from surrounding farms and villages.

The day before the barbecue we had lunch, and then the children went off with Penya to fish for brown trout in the pond. Dariya suggested that we drive my mother back up the road to Highmoor, where we first met. My mother thought it a perfect place for an afternoon stroll, and she was delighted that we were so taken with her favorite place.

I drove the Jeep; Starburst sat regally beside me in the front seat, snout raised to the breeze, and Wally, tongue hanging out, lay in the rear. Dariya and my mother sat in the back seat.

Once we arrived, my mother and Dariya walked side by side on the narrow path, and I followed a few paces behind, listening to the conversation about the parallel lives my wife and my mother had lived.

They weren’t exactly shutting me out, but they weren’t quite letting me in, either. They were comparing notes in that particular way women have. It’s always been foreign to me, perhaps because there were no women in my life as I was growing up. It was a way of quickly building a relationship by sharing intimate parts of their lives; finding familiarities and differences; being willing to give up information about themselves, each taking delight in what the other was willing to reveal.

They talked and laughed as they climbed the slight incline to the hilltop, and I quietly slipped away down the last fork, leaving them to ascend to the rocky summit without me. I didn’t need company, and it was clear to me that they were content to be alone.

I’m not sure whether I ran down the footpath, or whether I trudged, counting every step. And I have no idea what I was thinking, or for how long I was absent from my body. But when I did come back to myself and look around, I found that I had circled back on the
veld
, and that I was a half mile distant from them.

As I turned to locate myself in space, I realized that the hill was behind me, and from where I stood I could see what looked like a slightly raised rock shelf, and two figures sitting on the boulders that my mother had been sitting on that first day. If they had looked out at the carpet of
veld
that lay unrolled at their feet like a gift, they would have noticed me—but I could see even at a distance that they were deep in conversation.

In Michaela, Dariya found someone on whom she could lavish the care and love that had lacked an object since the death of her own mother. For Sally and Greg, the absence of a grandmother had been significant, and Michaela had already enriched their lives. But for me, the answer was less clear. It was too late for my mother to simply walk onto my stage and replace the woman for whom I had spent my life grieving; and it was too late for me to play the son she had left at the age of seven. What was left was only the possibility of a future not burdened by the full weight of the past.

I had been walking fast, and now I stopped, breathing hard. It was mid-afternoon, and the winter sun was warm on my skin. I loved the fact that I could feel the heat of the sun, and at the same time be chilled by a cool breeze. The
veld
grasses were soft, sunlit, waving gold, and I had arrived at a clear pond on which white-breasted cormorants paddled, ducking for food. Dragonflies hovered and flitted around in profusion, and high above, circling lazily in the currents with dark, outspread wings against the sparkling blue of the sky, were several hawks, and a small eagle with white patches on its underwing.