The Shouting in the Dark (18 page)

He turns his back, lights a Rothman's, smokes it in three drags, rolls his heels across the edge of the verandah flags. Then he turns to her again. He pushes her down into one of the rattan chairs. As she sinks back he succeeds somehow in keeping his mouth a constant three-four inches from her eyes. His square hands are braced on the armrests.

‘This girl's parents,' he spells out, ‘This girl's parents think often about death because death is a fact of life. I tried to teach you this when I gave you shooting practice.'

In front of her face is the
wah-wah-wah
of his lips, the mustard-yellow teeth going up and down, the white threads strung between the thin dry lips. Ella doesn't want to look at these ugly things but it's impossible to shift her eyes away.

This girl is the one life her parents have spawned, he goes on spitting. May the fates forgive them. And this means, mark his words, she needs to think about their deaths. Hasn't she herself said it if ever he in a blue moon attends events at her school? He looks worse than a grandfather, he's a wizened dwarf. And fair enough. He is. So she should bear in mind these two imminent facts-to-be, the father's death, the mother's death, and then what follows. What she'll do after these events have taken place: how to survive.

Lock up the house and go camping in the hills by myself, Ella thinks, still struggling and failing to avoid looking into his mouth, the white threads thinning and thickening as he talks. She tries to think of something else, something happier. She imagines the great gust of freedom she'll feel rushing past her ears on the day when their two deaths – the one preferably straight after the other – when their deaths open a door, letting in the light.

She thinks of taking the car – it would be her car then and she would be able to drive it, she has watched Dad driving long enough. She would take the car and drive north, why not? – zigzag across the continent, see the sights they have swept over on their cross-Africa flights, Okavango's green fingers, the Mountains of the Moon, Kilimanjaro and its eternal snow, the Nile delta's pitchfork shape. She imagines belting out as she drives the song she has heard on the radio,
I want to break free-ee
, shouting the words through the open car windows, the wind shafting through her hair. And when she reached Egypt she wouldn't cross to Europe, no, she's seen Europe, or at least some of it. No, she would cross not to Europe but to Asia. There must be a ferry or something across the Suez Canal, a pontoon. And once she's in Asia, there will be a road leading to the Himalayas, its high snowy peaks, so she imagines, the rosy light of dawn gilding them. In the Himalayas she will pay a visit to the lammergeyers that swoop there, riding the high air currents . . .

With a huffing noise the father turns his back on her and lights another cigarette. Ella gets up slowly, moves towards the verandah door. The door handle creaks as she opens it but he doesn't look round. A blue coil of smoke stretches up over his head and makes a circle around the naked light bulb.

 

At the end of the winter before Ella begins her school-leaving certificate, the father develops a new health complaint – prostate pains. The condition is benign, in his doctor's opinion, there's no need for concern. But man is a dying animal, how many times has the father not said it? The day after he receives the diagnosis he begins to rehearse an emergency scenario, the choreography of a family crisis. He's thought it all out in advance, what-to-do-when.

He calls Ella to his desk and asks her to stand beside it, straight up.

‘When I die – ' he coughs, licks his lips. ‘I've been thinking about it, Ella, that question you asked. Why all the talk of death? In a way it was a perfectly fair question. You wanted to be prepared. We all grow a little wiser with age. So, in the spirit of the question, let's look this thing in the eye. Let's think about our deaths as if they soon will happen.'

He clicks the Bic in his breast pocket. The pen, its matt-silver surface, grates on her no less than it did in the days they wrote to Mr Brezhnev.

‘When I die,' the father begins again, and every time thereafter, around once a week at least, clicking the Bic like a metronome. There's rarely an obvious trigger for his speech, not that Ella can detect. She sniffs surreptitiously but there's no Old Brown Sherry on the air.

‘Mind,
meid
, it may happen when you least expect it, when I die,' he says. ‘It'll strike like that bird threatened to do with Bogey, suddenly. It won't be like shooting practice. It'll be just you by yourself. So when the news comes, the news that I'm dead, when the call comes from the hospital to your school, and then from the head's office to your classroom through the intercom, this is what you do.'

The intercom – Ella has told him about it, the white box with its plastic grille that sits quietly crackling above the blackboard in every classroom. Since the student riots, government schools across the country have installed intercoms in case of a state of emergency. In Rhodesia they've had intercoms in public buildings since before the border wars.

‘When that happens,' the father continues, ‘When the teacher calls you to the front, he, what's his name, the thin fellow who runs marathons, yes, Kavanagh, he'll say words to this effect. He'll say, Ella, you're to go to the head's office, there may be bad news. I believe your father, unfortunately, has now died.'

Your father unfortunately has now died
, Ella silently repeats the sentence. Each time he works through the story, there is without fail the ugly Dutchified
now
that the Irish Mr Kavanagh would scorn to use.
Jouw vader is nu dood, is nu eindelijk dood,
is the sentence he's thinking of. Your father is now at last dead.

‘When he says this,' the father presses on, ‘You will not cry. This is my order. Mind that you take notice. I will have no tears. True, you may feel no need to cry, this rotter is no great loss to the world, we know that, but, in any case, I order, you will not cry. With all your faults you have some backbone, so you will not imitate your mother, you will not even want to cry. I'll have no useless female tears spilt over me.

‘What you do instead is this. First, you take a deep breath and straighten your back, exactly, like that. When straight-backed it's always easier to control the emotions. Next, you go to your desk, pack up the books you've been using and put them neatly in your bag, just as normal. Talk to no one. After a piece of unusual news, talk can unsettle, so you will not talk. Instead you'll nod politely to Kavanagh. He may want to extend a hand, but don't waste a minute, sweep past him with a nod. Remember, it's an unusual occurrence and the whole class will be there watching. Don't give them anything to watch. Sweep by, leave by the door' – how else? Ella thinks – ‘and make your way to the headmaster's office, slowly, so as not to get out of breath.

‘Then, once there, in the head's office, you call your mother. At this point she may not yet have the news, that I'm now dead, I'm trying to arrange it that way, so you'll have to break it to her. You'll be the message carrier. Once she has the news, your mother will need your help. You know this. She has a backbone like a sponge' – Ella thinks of Mam on the aeroplane floor – ‘But she's also a lady, princess on the pea, she can't do without extra support. When her sister Ella died she was a mess. I made my way to Holland to give her extra support. I put her sister's wedding ring on her finger. When I die you must make sure you get to her as soon as possible. Before you say anything, check she has taken her pills. Phone Holland for help if necessary, Cousin Jan-Kees, Lieke's older brother, the accountant, he'll be happy to assist.' Ella has a vague memory of Jan-Kees, the carefree laugh he produces readily and often, sometimes when there's nothing to laugh about. ‘If your mother wishes, let Jan-Kees come out, fetch her home in style. But while you wait for him, play the man, rise to the occasion. Do not whatever you do give way to panic.'

Sourness rises at the back of Ella's throat whenever he reaches this point in the scenario. How small he must believe her heart is, she thinks to herself each time he says these same words, small and hard as a hazelnut, to deal with his death in this way.

But she swallows the sourness, draws her back up even straighter. Well, if that's what he thinks then let him be right. Her starring role in the intercom drama depends on his being off the scene, dead,
now dead
, and on her growing stronger
as a result
. Fine, he's said it, let it be true. She feels little for him, almost next-to-nothing. If it weren't for her night watches she'd feel nothing at all. At this point in his scenario she hates him. In her tiny heart there is only thin air and this little pinch of black dust, of hate.

Quietly, without breathing a word, Ella changes her school-day habits. Now, whenever she enters a classroom, any school room, the laboratories, even the girls' changing room, she runs through her private drill. First she checks the walls to see where the intercom speaker is. It's always over the blackboard, if there is a blackboard, but still she checks, makes sure from the glowing red light that it's operational, this fateful window through which the death-laden future may at any moment burst. She calculates the time it will take to walk from her desk to the door. Then she sizes up the teacher. Will they be happy to let her go, to sweep by without so much as a handshake? They'll have to be. She will be insistent. She straightens her back. These days she keeps her back very straight indeed. If the father only knew how straight, how ready she is to run through his routine, then perhaps he'd see at last how disciplined she really is, what a rational, useful
man
she can be.

In the general hospital down in Durban the father has his prostate removed. What gives grief, he says looking hard at Ella, is better out than in.

The doctor declares the operation successful. It's a new lease on life, the father agrees. The minor embolism on the wound a few days later is unfortunate but easily dealt with. As for the week of radiation therapy the following month, he embraces it. It's as well to be 100% safe. He drives himself down to treatment in the Beetle, cigarette in hand.

Happy as he appears, whistling sometimes through his front teeth, the When-I-Die routine increases in frequency. He speaks the piece sometimes twice a weekend; now and then twice a night. Ella finds a way of looking attentive during the drill without properly listening. As he clears his throat to begin the thing again, ‘Now,
meid
, when I die . . .,' she lets her fringe fall over her face.

Sometimes, very occasionally, he breaks off his string of instructions with a sudden shake of his jowls and takes a new direction. ‘When I'm dead,' he says, ‘think how delighted you'll be.'

Is he testing how hardened she has by now become? He can test away. She's rock-solid, hard as nails.

‘Imagine how you and your mother'll be able to go on holiday. There's life insurance put away for that, holidays, the mountains, the beach. As we never go on holiday. Your mother might be tempted to put her lips to a sherry or two.'

Ella feels buoyed by his lightness, forced as it sounds.

‘Not holidays only, Dad,' she comes back one summer evening on the verandah, mist settling in the river valley. ‘The happiness won't only be having the holidays. When I walk to the headmaster's office, that day when the news comes you are
now
dead, I'll skip. I'll want to jig for joy. I'll know that I'm free when you are dead.'

But this he doesn't like. A shadow moves across his eyes. ‘Take care,
kind
,' he says grimly, and downs his tumbler of sherry. ‘There's something called Beyond a Joke.'

‘But I was saying no more than you ever say,' she flings back. She thinks of the Colt 45, immediately switches the thought off. ‘You and Mam, you're the ones who go on, death, death, death, night and day. In other people's homes, Linda's home, believe it or not, there are babies, people talk about the future. Anyone would think, listening to you two, death was the main point.'

‘And maybe they'd be right,
meid
, maybe so. For me the path from cradle to grave was never meant to go via another cradle. That was not the plan. It was not your mother's plan. Listen to what I'm telling you here. Your Mam never thought she'd marry. After the war there were few men available, very few decent men. Her sister got the last
nietsnut
down on his luck hunting around for a good Dutch bride. That one, the sister, she had a baby or two, yes, but they came out too early and dead, due to the cancer.'

Ella's breath misses a beat. She looks over at him. Other babies? Another baby or
two
? He doesn't meet her eye but the frown has left his forehead. He's stating these things as plain facts, without sadness, neatly linking them up with the other plain facts of his life.

‘There was a war on when I was a young child, rationing, restrictions, you name it, though we were neutral, and then of course another war followed twenty-five years later.' He sips thirstily at his empty tumbler. ‘I was in my thirties, best time of a man's life. Me and my generation, we kept death always in mind. As a boy of five or six, the time of the first war, I would sit on the front doorstep of our house in the Koestraat in Leiden and watch the people go by. I remember thinking to myself, I don't know why, in a few years' time these folks will all be dead.'

Ella shifts a leg that has gone numb, ever so gently, to avoid creaking the rattan. But he has come to the end of his flow. Above the pockets of mist in the valley the sky overhead is clear and starry. The distant hills stamp black shapes on the blaze.

She thinks of the unborn siblings her aunt – Aunt Ella – miscarried before she was born, surprising presences she had no idea of till now. She remembers the strange pressure of interest or curiosity she used to feel coming at her from Ella's portrait, after Mam first told her about it. An image steps into her thoughts of the babies lined up, their melty brown eyes like their mother's – a ghostly row of which she makes a part, the only living part, hovering by herself at the back.