Small Circle of Beings (22 page)

‘Hey,’ he said. He had their attention. ‘He’s only got one
ball
,’ he said.

Rick was white. He stared at Shell. ‘You said you wouldn’t say…’

They were laughing, the others. ‘Really?’ they wanted to know. ‘Show us. Is it true?’ They crowded him.

Rick held onto his towel.

They laughed then and Shell laughed too, with bitterness. He laughed as he betrayed the mad old woman, and himself.

It was the others that took pity when they saw tears in Rick’s eyes. They left him alone and went back to their vigil. In their boredom they hardly glanced as Rick had to take off the
towel to dress.

Shell watched, though. He refused to look away from blushing Rick with his
undescended tes-tikkel
.

‘I’m sorry,’ Shell said. He was. ‘I didn’t know you were so soft.’

There were no limits to Shell’s hatred of the friend he also – surely – loved. From time to time, at unexpected moments (as they sat down at the swimming pool, or down at the
cricket pavilion, watching a game), he would strike out at Rick with delight, hitting him in the stomach, making him double over. Or he’d grab his hair and pull till he snivelled. Mostly,
though, it was the mortal blows he dealt when nobody else was near: ‘I wish I’d never met you.’

‘You don’t!’

‘I do. You’re boring, Rick. You make me bored.’

Rick was abject, humble. ‘I know I’m not good enough for you, Shell –’

‘Yes, you are.’ Shell crushed him ‘You’re good enough for me, Rick. Nothing special about me.’

They were inseparable. They walked to and from class together. They sat beside each other in prep, in morning assembly, at the supper table. Once a week on Wednesday afternoons the boarders were
allowed to go into town. Rick and Shell went to movies. They saw
Endless Love
. They saw
First Blood
. They went to bookshops together. They bought ice-creams at shopping centres and
wandered around, gazing into windows.

Shell never returned to Rick’s home for another weekend. He feared the revenge of those grasping fingers, coated in rings. He might be smothered in those white robes.

Rick did ask once. ‘Is it my mother?’ he wanted to know. ‘Does she frighten you?’

‘I like your mother,’ Shell said. ‘If you must know, Rick, if you really have to know – it’s you. I can’t bear you. For too long at a time,’ he added
kindly.

Rick lowered his eyes.

‘And nobody could blame me for that,’ Shell said.

He understood so much. Rick thought he had never met anybody who understood so much. He would stare at Shell when he was looking elsewhere. It seemed to Rick that any amount of activity was
pointless when there was Shell Fynn doing something elsewhere. He would wake up in the night and look at him. He would follow him anywhere.

Even into that dark hollow under the trees at the edge of the rugby fields. Light came down like a grey pollen. Rick squatted there, obliging, turned to look out through the hanging leaves
toward the far field, where boys were running. Only to feel it hit his back. Only to feel Shell Fynn pissing on his back. He knew before he saw what was happening to him; he had himself conspired
for this moment. For the hot, salty, contemptuous stream on his shoulders.

‘Hey,’ Rick cried. ‘Hey, hey!’ He was trying to get away. But not too hard.

Rick whimpered. Shell was also whimpering. Or perhaps he was laughing, it was hard to tell.

When he was finished, he just stood. By this time Rick was sobbing. He was tearing at the ground. ‘No,’ he cried. ‘No, no!’ He threw sand. Urine stank in his hair. It
stuck his shirt to his back.

Shell felt obliged to hold him. He knelt beside him and cradled him, rocking. They swayed together under the grey trees. They clung to each other. Rick saw that Shell was, actually, crying.

‘I hate you. I hate you.’ Rick could hardly talk.

But Shell, whose vindication was finally complete, felt only compassion.

At the end of the first term, Shell returned home for three weeks of holiday. It was with a dull reluctance that he boarded the evening train, wearing his school uniform and
carrying the same suitcase with which he’d left. Only as the swaying carriage took him beyond the northern limits of the city did he begin to feel at ease. (Rick had left for Pretoria earlier
that same day; he’d held onto Shell’s sleeve. ‘I wish I could go with you,’ he said. ‘You can’t,’ Shell said. ‘I wish you’d come with me
then,’ he said. ‘No, thank you,’ Shell said. He had never felt such indifference. Rick had become an absence). Shell settled back into his seat and rolled his white sleeves up to
his elbows. There were neat moles on the backs of his arms. A round wart had begun to form on his right hand, at the bottom of his thumb. He picked at it and thought. He thought of his mother who
would be there to fetch him the next morning.

She was waiting on the platform. He saw her as the train moved in.

He saw her before her searching eyes saw him. She was a small woman, her skirt pulled sideways by the wind. For a moment he could not bring himself to recognise her. She was unknown, slight and
odourless, not worthy of his resentment. He would have found it possible to walk past her without a second glance.

But she seized him as he stepped from the train, his suitcase in hand. She sucked his cheek with her dry lips. ‘Shell,’ she gurgled. ‘Shell, darling.’

They drove to the house in the same white Triumph she’d owned since his memory began. The landscape passing at the windows – near and far, the signposts and trees, the views down the
valley – was the same that he recalled from countless such drives into town and back. And coming down the rutted dirt road, the tyres buffeted below, he saw at the same bend the same glimpse
of the roof below, between the trees.

He stepped out into the garage. He took his suitcase from the back seat. His mother walked ahead of him into the cool kitchen. He followed unwillingly.

‘Your room, Shatsi. The very same.’

He climbed the stairs. His room was, indeed, unchanged; he glanced at the walls to see the tiny smudges he recalled. On his desk stood the tubular blue vase, holding its fistful of dry stems. He
unpacked his clothes. He changed into shorts and T-shirt. He went back downstairs. His mother brought a tray of tea to him on the back stoep where he sat for the rest of the afternoon, watching the
light burn away like a slow fuse. He barely moved on the chair. Above the mountains there was a smeary disc rolling, that people called the moon.

As always, it was the table that united them. Called by the round note of the bell, they congregated there while the night began outside. The knives and forks lay shining with sharp points and
edges. He took his place.

His father sat opposite in his usual seat. Perhaps his hair was cut a little differently, or had begun to thin. Otherwise it was the very man that Shell could have conjured in his head; large,
ponderous, the light gleaming off his glasses. He sawed at the chicken so that white chunks of meat fell away. His hands were just as white.

Estelle greeted Shell with hesitation. He answered gladly. She’d cut her hair and it curled over her ears and collar. She’d had an ear pierced. He sensed her on his left as a faint
heat; his arm brushed hers once as he brought the fork up to his mouth.

‘We’re very pleased to have you home,’ Dad said. There was a trickle of gravy from his mouth. It ran out like blood.

‘So pleased, Shatsi,’ his mother echoed, and raised her glass.

Estelle said nothing, but looked coyly down at her plate. With her fluttering eyelids she was wooing him, her conquering brother who had returned.

Afterwards he went back out to the stoep. An autumnal chill made the air stiff against his face. He leaned against a pole, wound with creeper. Without turning, he heard his father walk out
behind and stand. Silent, they both looked down the dark valley, above which that moon had now become harsh and cold.

‘We are, you know,’ his father said. ‘Very glad. To have you back.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You are always in our thoughts.’

He said nothing. He shifted against the pole and heard the fragile creeper tearing under his shoulder.

They stood, not speaking. The bald moon was pasted to the sky, as round and white as a cigarette burn. Shell had read that there were footprints marked indelibly on its surface. But down here in
the lonely garden, he could not imagine those distant tracks. Here the trees were roaring in an unfelt wind. The same high stars were burning.

Shell left again two days before school started. The trip down to the station was a repetition of the last: the quiet car, headlights, dark. But he was absolutely without
sadness as he took his leave. Fumbling with his suitcase, he kissed his mother on a charred cheek. He shook his father’s hand with a perfunctory grip. He climbed aboard as the train began to
clunk and crash in preparation. Looking out through the compartment window, he saw again this couple who had conspired to bring him about. He saw them for the first or last time. They stood, slung
against each other as though they’d toppled that way, hands clasping, shoulders pressed, waiting for erosion to complete their collapse. As he watched, a small blizzard of leaves blew across
them, so that they became fragmented and faded – as if already only remembered.