The Shouting in the Dark (10 page)

You are too loud, Ella wants to tell her father, her mother; we are too loud. Except no one could hear her for the noise he is making, and the blood pounding in her head.

Not long after, the skipping rope Ella leaves coiled at the foot of her bed inside the covers disappears as silently as did the pills, but nothing is said. Undeterred, she finds another way of binding herself in bed. She hoards clothes she has outgrown, that corset her tight, wears them under her pyjamas. In the morning her tourniquets have left red welts on her skin.

She takes two precautions. First, she binds only those parts of her body covered by her school uniform. Second, she hides the tight clothes each morning at the back of her cupboard.

The mother pays another night-time visit to her bedroom.

‘Ella,
hier zijn wij eerder geweest
, we've been here before,' the mother whispers, her breath mint-scented with mouthwash. ‘We thought you'd got over it. But still I hear you, every night, moving about. What's it this time? You know we can't live this way.'

Sweat pools in Ella's tightly bound armpits.

‘Dad, he's so loud,' she moans, instantly wanting to kick herself. Her father talking on the verandah – it's something she looks out for every day.

‘
Nonsens
, he's been doing what he does out there since we moved here. He likes a late smoke. No,
meid
, whatever the problem is, it's inside you, it's unbalanced. You'll end up killing us all. So, try to remember, if you can't improve this night-time situation on your own, there are other things we can do, tougher ways of looking after you.'

Other things we can do? Tougher ways? Ella brings her finger down on the bedside lamp switch and faces the mother in the light.

‘There are sleep clinics, Ella,' the mother says, unflinching. ‘Places to help sufferers like you. There's one in Durban, very quiet, I've found out all about it. They give you an injection, a big dose of anaesthetic, the same as when you have an operation, so you sleep for twenty-four hours, forty-eight, whatever's necessary. Your sleep cycle's put back into a normal rhythm. Your overworked head is made to rest.'

Like Rex, Ella thinks, the Durban dog she sat with at the gatepost, put to sleep a year or so after they moved to Braemar. The father said he was old and in the way. She remembers his warm firm neck under her arm. The sweat in her armpits is suddenly freezing cold.

She walks to the window, separates the curtains, presses her forehead to the cool glass. The father tonight is in his rattan chair but quiet. The lamp overhead makes a still mustard pool on the chipped table beside him. At the verandah's edges the light fades into the surrounding brown darkness. Funny, she hadn't noticed before, how the colours out there are the same as in
The Night Watch
.

An anaesthetic to force her to sleep though, she thinks, that would tax her to her limits. It would be like loading a strapping contraption right inside her head.

She remembers the black and white photograph in the father's
Winkler Prins
encyclopaedia, an asylum ward full of mad people in their pyjamas.
During the First World War mental illness among ex-combatants in Britain soared
.
Bed rest was prescribed
.

‘Make the drug strong,' Ella imagines the mother saying on the phone, ‘Mix it up well. She must be trained to sleep.'

To emerge intact from such bed rest, she will have to find a hidey-hole deep as a Durban river gorge; she will have to set her mind into a granite groove. She puts a hand to her cold forehead. To her surprise she finds her whole face is wet, as if it were possible for tears to fall upwards as well as down.

The Netherlands, as far as Ella is concerned, is the best place in the world to visit. These northern Low Countries are her other home, her home from home. She may not have visited many places, true, but Artis is in the Netherlands, this is one of the reasons why it's the best place. The two-yearly treks with the mother all the way from their edge of the south-east African plateau to the misty flatlands where her parents were born are wonderful because they have this one main destination –
Natura Artis Magistra
, the Amsterdam zoo.

They make the long journey to Oegstgeest, Zuid-Holland, to help look after her grandmother, Oma, her only grandparent. Oma is suffering from old age and lives in a two-storey home for the elderly on the edge of the town. They make the journey also because the mother misses the Netherlands and the home she left behind. ‘Only daughter as I now am,' she says, ‘My mother needs me and I need her.'

Ella doesn't mind the journey. If it was up to her they could make the journey every year instead of every two. She doesn't mind the long days they spend in the home sitting beside Oma's chair, not talking much, nibbling Sun-Maid raisins from California. She doesn't mind Oma's warm powdery old lady's smell sifting down to her and the startled look of her eyes behind her thick bifocals don't bother her either. Oma here in Holland is at home, so Ella sitting beside her feels at home, too.

In fact, there's nothing about Oegstgeest or the old age home Ella minds, but still she's happy to accept the treats and outings Mam offers as a compensation for having interrupted their other life back in Braemar. When the treat is Artis Zoo she's more than happy to accept.

She begins her reminders about the zoo just as soon as they have set foot on the smooth walkways of Schiphol airport, once her mother has had a chance to comb her hair and calm down after their long flight from Durban. Knotted inside the hugging arms of cousins and second cousins who smell of wet wool, Ella pitches her voice high to make sure everyone hears her request. ‘Mam, Mam, Tante Suus, when are we going to Artis, Tante Suus, Mam? You said soon, very soon.'

No arrival in the drizzly geometry of the Netherlands is complete without the promise that tomorrow, or, yes, very soon, she will be taken by Mam or Tante or Cousins Ineke or Lieke, to visit Artis.

Ella thinks often of her mother's story about Artis and its wolves: how their yowling kept Mam awake at night when as a child she went to stay with
her
oma in Amsterdam, whose house lay a few streets away from the zoo. The awful feeling she had listening, Mam says, was that she herself, there in her safe bed in the big city, was the creature out of place, not the wolves. The city by night belonged to their yowling.

Ella thinks that, on the contrary, she would've liked hearing the wolves, the yipping barks cutting through the cold night air. Wouldn't that be incredible, to lie in bed surrounded by wolf noise, as if you were in a snow-covered hut in Siberia, safe in bed though circled by blazing eyes?

As far as she can tell, all the world's wild animals great and small are collected together in Artis's long rectangle stretched across three city blocks close to the grey-brown Amstel River. No matter how often they visit, every time she walks through the gateposts each mounted with their large gold-painted eagle; every time she sets foot on the moist brick walkways; turns left to her first port of call, the reptile house; sees again the slowly shifting hieroglyphs of the snakes in their glass tanks – her breath catches in her throat.

Where they live on the African shield there are no zoos. In Africa many marvellous animals are to be found in the game reserves: white rhinos, lions, herds of shaggy wildebeest, all roaming free – or so the ads in the KLM brochures she reads on the plane say. However, game reserves are out of bounds for her family. If ever she mentions the two words
game reserve
together the father has his answer ready. ‘What do those dumps offer but daylight robbery? A moronic drive through a worn-out old bit of African savannah where most of the animals are asleep, bah, what's the point of that? When you have an excellent view of the African landscape here from your own verandah.'

So there are the caged animals of Artis instead, but Ella isn't complaining. There is as a matter of fact nothing to complain about on their four- or six-month-long visits to the Netherlands packed full of treats she never gets back in South Africa. There is Zippo's circus where the lions Harris and Tieras jump through flaming hoops without getting scorched. Ella loves Harris and Tieras. She draws pictures of them at her new Dutch school, the Steiner Vrijeschool, where the mother has registered her. They take outings to see the old familiar pictures at the Rijksmuseum, though this time set in their fancy gold frames, not postcard-size. They go to afternoon shows at the Oegstgeest puppet theatre, famous for its child-high puppets. For breakfast Mam gives her sugar waffles, and then as much blood sausage with every meal as she can stomach.

Even the ordinary everyday things in Holland are good, like the evenings they spend at Tante Suus's house with her teenage cousins Ineke and Lieke, doing nail-painting, making popcorn and watching television. Television is a special new treat as South Africa does not have television. There are also the times sitting with Oma. Oma is so still a person, so unlike the mother and the father. The space around her is very soft and quiet.

But above all the other enjoyable things is Artis. In Artis, once they are past the opening exhibits, the reptile house, the dromedary enclosure, the African rock rabbits, the mother's strong middle finger inserts itself between her shoulder blades. Ella leans back into it and goes more slowly. She likes to stop everywhere, at each and every animal's precinct. She won't be hurried. Where the cages look empty she kneels and peers in amongst the leaves till she finds a sign of life: a moving tail, a stirring horn. She knows there will always be one.

No visit to the zoo passes without some new sight to see. The elephant with the star-branding on both haunches, who one afternoon breaks into a shuffle dance a circus trainer must once have taught him. The tiger's sudden leap from one rock to another, his burning stripes creasing and stretching. The moulting wallabies with mood swings that on each visit look different, now curious, now scornful, now enormously amused.

The polar bear cage is on the final turn of the circular walk through the zoo, beyond the seals and the penguins. The first time Ella sees him, just like every other time she will see him, he is standing swaying on his hind legs, the zoo's one bear, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Reared up as he is, he could be scary – but he looks more than anything bewildered, as if something had hit him in the face.

Seeing the bear Ella immediately bursts into tears. Her eyes move up across the yellow-white belly, the mighty forepaws dangling like a puppet's hands, then meet his small dull eyes. But she cannot go on looking. She stands stock-still on the brick pathway, buries her face in her hands and sobs.

She cannot look again at that huge hopeless swaying bear yet she still feels him moving. Through her wet fingers she sees his shadow shift. The winter sun is setting behind him so his shadow touches her red wellington boot, then moves away again. She stands rooted, her chest aching, her chin jammed into her chest, till the mother takes her by the hands and drags her away.

But no sooner have they left than she is begging to go back. She must see again the bear. She
will
see again the bear,
zij wil, zij wil.
They must go to Artis, they must see the bear.

So, within the first few days of each visit to the Netherlands, a weekly pattern is set. As Friday approaches Ella clamours to go again to the zoo, tomorrow, this weekend, as soon as possible. Her mother coughs a little, suggests something closer to Oegstgeest, the
kermis
in the town square? But by Saturday breakfast she has given way.

Again they walk through the tall gateposts. Ella can feel her breath coming faster. They seek out her favourite animals, the tiger, the llamas, the curious-and-scornful wallabies. They detour via the antbears; they loop back to the African rock rabbits. And then, at the very end of the route, they reach the polar bear swaying in his cage, his great paws dangling, and she is inconsolable.

The second or third time they see the bear, the mother, prepared, produces tissues, leads her away to buy ice-cream. It is a cold day, the vanilla cones smoke. Perched on an icy concrete bench the mother tells Ella that the zoo prides itself on being a humane zoo, it takes the welfare of all its animals seriously.

‘Look around,
kind
, at the size of the big cats' pits and length of the wolf run,' she says. ‘See how well everyone is looked after. Perhaps your
ijsbeer
likes to stand up, that's why his cage isn't so big? Perhaps he's taking his exercise by swaying. Wasn't he a dear beast though, didn't you think,
een lieve dier
, like a huge white teddy?'

Ella moves her head slightly but says nothing. She doesn't think her polar bear looks like a teddy at all.

The third or fourth time Ella and her mother see the bear, there is the hurrying away after a short period, there are the tears, but this time no ice-cream, no reassurance, only, once again, a short talk about the big white teddy,
het lieve dier
. ‘Why should a big white teddy make you cry, Ella? It makes me think of curling up in an armchair with a soft toy and a hot chocolate. It doesn't make me want to cry.'

Ella puts her hands on her knees, raises her shoulders and puffs out air.

The fifth or sixth time, the mother is fed up. ‘We won't go again if this
tendency
persists,' she tells Oma when Ella is present, raising an eyebrow. Oma remarks that Ella has the nose of her third cousin Jeroen on her father's side, lucky for her, avoiding the family conk.

But by the next time, a week or so later, the mother has forgotten about Ella's
tendency
. Most mornings in the Netherlands she forgets to prod her as she does back in Braemar, like a pawpaw, to measure her height and peer at her tonsils. She declares herself willing, yet again, just this once, to indulge Ella's
quite sweet
interest in her polar bear. She buys a monthly Artis pass. They get their route through the zoo down pat. The rock rabbits, big cats, et cetera, at double-quick pace, and then, the silent agreement is, the mother lingers at the seals while Ella goes on ahead on her own. She turns the corner in the brick pathway, her eyes to the ground, her nails digging into her palms. Finally, when she is ready, she looks up. She comes face to face with the polar bear standing swaying on his hind legs.

She doesn't think of the bear as
her
bear, though the mother calls him that. She sees him as – what? A bored, penned-in beast. Her tears make no difference to him, she knows, but still, whenever she first sees him, she can't help sobbing. There's no father around to say the usual. ‘Stop that womanish mewling; how I hate to hear a female cry. Women's hearts are blocks of ice. Their tears mean zip.'

Across the weeks of their Netherlands visits, Ella inches a little closer to the polar bear's cage, though never onto the gravel semicircle in front of it. Her crying shouldn't disturb the bear. He shouldn't see how sad her thoughts about him are.

Once, she tries looking up into his eyes, to see if he's as bored as he looks from a distance. Though bears can't tell the time, she doesn't think, still he sees his shadow move, doesn't he? He sees it shifting to and fro in front of his bars like a pendulum.

But the thought of the bear marking the minutes of his endless days in the cage is too much. The idea of him swaying there tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, seeing his shadow going to and fro with no change in sight, day after day – it's worse even than the first time she came face to face with him. She tries to put the thought somewhere else in her head but it's too late. A hole full of black fluid opens in her chest. The fluid rises and flows up her throat and out of her eyes though she tries as hard as she can to swallow it down.

 

It's always winter in the Netherlands, a gentle dove-grey winter, because the mother plans their months here to coincide with the scorching Zululand summers. On cold mornings Ella likes tracing the ferny frost patterns on the windows with her finger and making smoky breath when she goes outdoors. She likes the tureens of primary-colour paints she's given at her school, the Vrijeschool, and mixing green, purple and orange on the newspaper spread across the floor. The schools here are conveniently open, because it's winter, while the schools in South Africa at the other side of the world are closed.

Even if the Vrijeschool involved less play and more work Ella wouldn't mind going to school here just as she doesn't mind being away from Braemar. She knows that their months in Oegstgeest are not a holiday. Her family doesn't go on holiday and, even if they did, the father would insist it must not be to the Netherlands. They are never here in the company of the father and they never call him while here. Calling would mean an expense, yet another waste of money and time.

‘You won't catch me stooping so low as to creep back into that tight yellow arsehole of the country of my birth,' the father says when he lets them out in the drop-off zone at Louis Botha airport in Durban. Every time they leave to see Oma, as he hefts their suitcases out of the car boot, he seems to feel pressed to make the same speech. ‘No, not even if you paid me,' he says, his hand in the air for silence, though no one is contradicting him. The mother starts breathing audibly, as if to drown him out. ‘Certainly not for months at a time, no, you won't catch me creeping,' he goes on, his voice rising. ‘Currying favour with those lily-livered toadies, and that includes our relatives who've never so much as left the place, except for the occasional holiday – it's insupportable as well as unaffordable, yes indeed,
ja zeker
. Some people have to work for their
kuch
. You go with my blessing but that arsehole isn't for me.'