The book of happenstance. Ingrid Winterbach
Читать онлайн книгу.
as hardly anything. I do not wish to burden my child with this. (Do I expect some degree of censure from her as well? An impatience with my stubborn clinging to my loss? She travels light – casting off much as she moves along.) Neither do I wish to involve Frans de Waard, my lover and companion.
But my shells! The paper nautilus, Argonauta argo, related to the nautilus, fragile, papery thin, lustrous – one of my most exquisite shells. A shy bride! A prancing little caravel on the open sea! A thirteen-year-old girl! The Conus betulinus, smooth, spiral-grooved around the base, a heavy, ochre-coloured shell, whose cool weight I can still feel in my hand. As I can likewise feel the weight of the two heavy Conus figulinus shells, and clearly recall the day when I bought them in a town on the Cape coast. The Conus marmoreus, of which Rembrandt made a series of etchings. The two dramatic Murex nigritus shells, a rare bounty, all the way from the Gulf of California – white, ornate, capriciously imagined, with dark markings over the shoulder region and dark-brown protrusions. The light Tonna variegata – delicate as a Japanese paper lantern! The Mitra mitra, largest of the mitres – a heavy, spiral-shaped shell resembling a bishop’s hat (the Latin mitra from the Greek mitra, turban). The small marks on it are a deep orange, slightly paler in the smaller shell. The Marginella mosaica, with spiralling rows of dark-grey or brown markings like sand drifts on its pale, milky surface – as if time itself has woven its marks into the surface.
I do not even want to think about the loss of the three nautiluses – the two smaller ones and one larger one. Two proud knights and a queen, standard-bearers of the striped blazon, little cavorting horses of the deep seas! Perhaps the closest to my heart of them all (except for the two brown Figulinus conches). The last remaining genus of the primeval order Nautiloidea – an ancient shell, smooth on the outside, coiled on the inside, with thirty-six chambers, of which only the outer ones are inhabited.
How did the thief know, with what unfailing instinct did he take the loveliest, the most valuable ones, those dearest to my heart? How should I explain this? Or should I see in it only the fickle hand of Mrs Fortuna?
In my distress I appeal to my mother, my father, and especially to my deceased sister, Joets. It is not that I address them, but rather that I turn my imploring face in their direction. As if to say: See me. Here I am. What am I to do?
Now that I no longer have to take their corporeal existence into account – with the subtle intervening shifts and irritations that mark a relationship – I think I am able to see each one of them with greater clarity.
I have not thought of Marthinus Maritz for a long time. Freek van As caused me to remember him again. Although my acquaintance with Marthinus was short-lived, he made a deep impression on me. In the presence of my former lover – sexy, foxy-red and seductively freckled Felix du Randt – the editor Herman Holst and the nebulous Freek van As, he slapped me hard on both cheeks, but even with those two robust clouts he could not succeed in making me change my ways.
*
“The man you told me about yesterday,” Theo Verwey says the next day, “you mentioned that he talks to his dogs. What does he say to them?”
“It’s not clear,” I say. “I don’t recall that his exact words are given. His apartment has walls reaching two or three storeys high, and I picture the dogs in a black marble cage.”
“What breed of dogs are they?” Theo asks.
“I can’t remember. White borzois, perhaps. Russian wolfhounds. Dogs cared for by his staff, I suppose. With that kind of money people can probably be employed for the sole purpose of caring for the dogs and taking them for walks. Although they are still glad to hear the voice of their master. They are referred to again at a later stage in the book, which makes you think that the rich man values these animals highly.”
Theo Verwey gazes pensively into the distance. Does he want to say something? Something he finds hard to say? I wait, while he picks up a number of cards from the desk and arranges them in a neat pile. He does not look up. I wait, sensing his hesitancy.
“The ransom of a man’s life is his wealth, but the poor hears no rebuke,” he quotes reflectively. I wait. Is that a dismissal or a prompt to continue?
We continue our work in silence for a while. This morning we are listening to Monteverdi madrigals. Two male voices are singing “Mentre vaga Angioletta”, about the miracle of love. An ecstatic intertwining of voices. But I find the music somewhat depressing. “O miracolo, miracolo, miracolo,” the men sing. I wonder what Theo makes of this ecstatic celebration of love. I watch him covertly. He shows no sign of being transported.
“Do you remember the poet Marthinus Maritz?” I ask.
“Yes,” Theo says, surprised. “Why?”
“I was thinking of him the other day,” I say.
“He had a beautiful voice,” Theo says.
How could I have forgotten! His voice was one of his most distinctive features. Memory is selective. I remembered the high rump, the rather thickset torso and the dark, bearded head. His aura of danger and defiance I remembered, the vengeful glint in his eye, but not his voice. Why?
“I’ve begun to write a novel,” I say.
“Oh, yes?” Theo says.
“It’s set in the Forties,” I say.
“What is it about?” he asks. He looks interested, or is feigning interest.
“The outlines are still tenuous,” I say, “the storyline is still undefined.”
(A young woman emerges onto a red cement stoep. She is wearing a floral dress. She is in love. She is about to be married. She is filled with anticipation about the new life that she is about to embrace. She wants to leave the sorrow of the past behind her. She has set her heart on fulfilment. She believes that this fulfilment of the heart is possible. She wishes only to make good the tears, the despair and the uncertainty of the past.)
“I’m thinking of rereading C.M. van den Heever,” I say, “even though a vocabulary for emotional nuance hardly exists in the prose of his time.” His eyes are large behind his glasses. He reflects on what I have said, holding the stack of cards loosely in his hands.
“No,” he says. “You’re right. You won’t find what you’re looking for in the early prose.” We are interrupted by a light knock on the door.
His wife closes the door behind her. She is pretty. She is also a successful businesswoman, and self-satisfied. She has a madonnalike beauty – fine features, large, bright eyes, softly curling hair, and small, sharp teeth (a feral sharpness). But this morning I detect in her presence (her trail, her wake) a slightly unpleasant feminine odour, associated with menstruation. Could the woman be careless about personal hygiene? Someone in her prominent public position? I find myself blushing, not for her sake, but for that of Theo Verwey. I am nervous that his wife’s intimate odour will embarrass him in my presence. As soon as I have greeted her, I leave Theo’s office.
I hurry to the tearoom, where we regularly have tea with the museum staff. I enjoy their conversations; they interest me. I am a lexicographer by profession (though not by initial training) and have not had much exposure to science during my career, although it has always interested me.
The tearoom is small. Boxes are stacked against one of the walls, there is the pervasive smell of bone. There is a table with a kettle and cups. Old easy chairs are arranged in a wide circle around a low coffee table. Freddie Ferreira is here this morning, and Vera Garaszczuk and Mrs Dudu. A while later Sof Benadé, Sailor and Nathi Gule also show up. For years I have not given death much thought, and now I am suddenly obsessed with it again. Obsessed: behep, from the Dutch behept, derived from the Middle Dutch behachten, or beheept (of which the origin is uncertain), in the sense of being stuck with, or troubled by. This is how Theo Verwey explained it to me.
Chapter three
We continue with the letter D. It is the beginning of June. The obsessive, almost perverse proliferation of summer is abating. Like someone coming to the