The book of happenstance. Ingrid Winterbach
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autumnal garden. In the early morning and at evening the colours are turning richer and deeper. The earth is becoming more fragrant. The threatening lushness of summer is cast off like a psychological affliction; there is a new commitment to décorum in the air. There is the promise of maturation. Even in this province, where the approaching autumn and winter are so different from where I come from.
Theo Verwey rocks back and balances on the rear legs of his chair this morning. Don’t, I want to say, you will fall over backwards. I have never seen him sit like that. He is deep in thought. The palms of his hands are pressed together tightly and his index fingers rest against his mouth. Keeping guard of his mouth this morning? Does something want to slip out? He is not that kind of man. I do not read him like that. Although I admit that I do not read him well.
I am sitting with the bulky stack of cards in my hand, the dictionaries open before me. The first card in the stack is da. The last card is dyvelaar.
“Da,” I say, “where does that come from?”
Da or dè is probably an abbreviation of daar (there) and was noted for the first time in Afrikaans by Pannevis as deh and in the Patriotwoordeboek as dé, he explains.
“Dyvelaar,” I rhyme teasingly, “as in twyfelaar?”
“Dy-vel-aar,” he spells out, “or dy-huid-aar.” A vein in the lower leg, the vena saphena, he explains. “Not to be confused with the femoral artery, the arteria femoralis.”
“What would the dermbeen be? And the dermbeendoring?” I ask.
“The dermbeen is the topmost, flat part of the hipbone, the ilium, and the dermbeendoring is any of its peaked protrusions.”
“Dermbeendoring,” I say. I repeat it a couple of times to feel the uncommon sequence of sounds in my mouth.
We are still listening to Monteverdi madrigals. Madrigali guerrieri e amorosi, performed by the Taverner Consort and Players on historical instruments, conducted by Andrew Parrott. This is not my favourite music by Monteverdi, but I do not object. The next track is exquisite, though, and we listen to it in silence. “Su pastorelli vezzosi. Su, su, su, fonticelli loquaci.” (Arise, comely shepherds. Arise, babbling springs.)
Theo leans back in his chair, his hands behind his head, and it must be the effect of the music, for I am unexpectedly overcome – overpowered – by a sexual receptivity to him in a way that I have not experienced before. The sensation is so intense that I feel slightly nauseous and have to bend forward. God forbid, I think, I could slide my hands under his shirt, over the chest, and let them nestle in his armpits.
It takes a while to regain my concentration. I continue to page through the dictionary. I read the definitions of “death” and “life”. This morning I rose with a heightened sense of mortality. The soft armpits, the powerful male stomach, the tender groin and instep of the foot. What would it be like, carnal love with this man? A day or two ago I told Theo Verwey about the passionate meeting between the man and his wife at the end of the book. I mentioned that they have sexual relations standing up. I told Theo that she clasped her legs around her husband’s body, but did not mention how ardently she kissed him. In the small hours I dreamt of a seducer – someone focusing obsessively on me. Something threatening in the man’s attentions. In the soft, compressed space of the dream he forced himself on me with an offensive licentiousness. I woke up and too soon lost the mood and content of the dream.
This morning I am inclined to think that it was death who had fawned upon me and flattered me like that last night. Why not? Would I not be able to clothe death in this way in my subconscious?
Their dictionary definitions hardly shed an adequate light on the mystery of either life or death. As a child I would often sit and watch dead insects. Or I would kill an ant to observe the difference between the living ant and the dead. I see now that I tried to probe the secret of life with my child’s mind.
“Do you have a clear conception of what life is, and how it originated?” I ask of Theo.
“That you will have to ask Hugo Hattingh,” Theo says.
“Will he know?”
“He will know, I presume. He should know how life first originated.”
“What kind of man is he?” I ask.
Theo Verwey makes an odd little gesture with his head and shoulders. Disparaging, dismissive? I cannot say.
“I don’t know him,” he says. “Have you started to alphabetise the cards?”
No, I have not. I glance through the cards in my hand. On the greater majority of these cards are words formed with or containing dood (both death and dead). Often descriptive, often to indicate the intensive form “unto death” – to the utmost. Doodaf (tired unto death), doodbabbel (babble to death), doodjakker (gambol or frolic to death).
“Doodlukas?”
“Regional. Dead innocent.”
“Nice,” I say.
Doodluters as a variant of doodluiters (blandly innocent or unconcerned), I read, doodmoor (murder, torture or strain to death), doodsjordaan (crossing the river Jordan as a metaphor for death), doodsmare (tidings of death), doodswind (wind bearing death), doodswym (total unconsciousness), doodboek (register of deaths), doodbaar (death bier), doodbus (death urn), dooddag (day of death), doodeens (agreeing completely), doodellendig (miserable to death), doodgaan-en-weer-opstaan (die-and-get-up-again, aromatic shrub Myrothamnus flabellifolia – so called because it appears dead in dry times but revives after rain), doodgaanskaap (sheep dying from causes other than slaughtering), doodgaanvleis (flesh of animal that has not been slaughtered), doodgeboorte (stillbirth), doodgegooi (very much in love; literally thrown dead), doodgeld (money paid out at death), doodgetroos (resigned unto death), doodgewaan (mistakenly assumed dead), doodgooier (heavy dumpling, or irrefutable argument), doodgrawer (gravedigger, or beetle of the genus Necrophorus), doodhouergoggatjie (descriptive name for any of various dark beetles of family Elateridae that keeps deathly still as self-protection), doodhoumetode (method by which an animal mimics death).
“They are endless,” I remark, “the words formed with death.”
“There are many interesting words,” Theo says, “but a large number of them have been lost.”
“The world is changing,” I say. “We don’t relate to death as intimately any more. I have never seen a winding sheet. Or felt the wind of death blow. Actually the mere thought of it makes me shiver a little.”
Theo smiles. “The wind of death, yes. An unpleasant thought.”
“An indecent thought,” I say. He smiles.
I continue looking through the cards. Doodkiskleed (black cloth covering a coffin), doodkisvoete (feet as large as coffins), doodknies (to waste away by continual moping), doodlallie.
“Doodlallie!” I say. “Where does that come from?”
“Very prosperous. A regional word.”
Some of these unusual combinations I have not encountered before. “Doodop?”
“Totally exhausted.”
Doodsbekerswam (also duiwelsbrood – devil’s bread, poisonous mushroom Amanita phalloides), I read. Doodsbenouenis (distress unto death), doodsdal (valley of death), doodseën (blessing for the deceased), doodsgekla (moaning associated with death), doodsgraad (degree of death).
“Degree of death. As if death has degrees.”
“The degree of heat or cold above or below which protoplasmic life can’t exist.”
“Protoplasmic life,” I say. “Would that be the first, most basic form of life?”
“Ask Hattingh that as well,” Theo says.
“Would that be the primal slime?”
“It could be that, yes.”
Doodshemp (shroud),