The Shallows. Ingrid Winterbach
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again, he doesn’t want to keep him from his sleep. Reis lies down, Pessoa tucks in the sheet over him as solicitously as a mother. Reis asks him to switch off the light. Initially the room is dark, then the light from outside seeps in through the chinks in the shutters. Reis closes his eyes and murmurs: Good night, Fernando. It seems to him as if it takes Pessoa quite a while to reply: Good night, Ricardo. Pessoa sits down on a chair in the room, crosses one leg over the other, places his hands on his knee. He is the very image of desolation. Reis wakes up in the middle of the night, the rain has stopped, the earth hurtles on through the utter silence of space. Pessoa is still sitting in the same place, in exactly the same posture, his face expressionless. Reis goes back to sleep. When he wakes up in the morning, Pessoa is no longer there. He must have left at first light.
Initially it rains incessantly in the city, Lisbon. A carnival festivity features a figure dressed in a tight black outfit with a skeleton painted on it in white. Dancing bones. At times I have a yen to dress myself in such a suit. On my bedside table is the skull of wire and white beads that I had made in the Eastern Cape by Zimbabweans. At night it keeps watch over me like Fernando Pessoa over his alter ego, Ricardo Reis.
Four
One morning a week after the pig episode Nick walked up the hill to Marthinus’ place. He wanted to inspect the set-up there. The idea of pigs interested him. Perhaps he should also acquire a pig, to compensate for the loss of his father’s pigs, the Large Whites.
Down the street, and then two blocks further along, towards the top of the hill (surprisingly close), he came upon the house. Whereas his house faced the sea squarely, with the mountain behind him, here the mountain was to the right and the sea to the left of Marthinus’ house. The house was set fairly far back, high up, with a staircase that ran all the way from the front gate to the wide stoep. There was a sign fixed to the gate: This property is patrolled by pigs. Not a pig in sight. The front garden, not very big, was terraced on both sides of the staircase. These terraces were planted with flowers and vegetables. Everything here testified to the hand of a dedicated gardener.
The house had been maintained as meticulously as the garden. In its day it must have been a stately home – large, dignified, with the wide front stoep.
On the stoep a woman sat reading. A Malay beauty, dark eyes, slightly sallow complexion. In the corner of the stoep a little boy was playing. Marthinus is at the back, the woman indicated with her head. He must be working in the garden. Nick could just walk straight through the house.
The passage was wide. The ceiling was high. The house smelt of floor polish and wood. A large house; four or more rooms, two on each side of the long passage. He had to cross the sitting room to get to the kitchen. The room was tastefully furnished. Cosy. Large sofas, easy chairs, fine old fireplace. Nguni hides on the floor. On the shelf above the fireplace were a beadwork buck, a bowl of lemons, two small figurines. Earthenware pots with plants on one windowsill. A bundle of dry laundry on one of the sofas, a few glasses and mugs standing around on the coffee table. Books and newspapers. The kitchen was tidy. A woman’s hand clearly in evidence here. Table scrubbed clean. No dirty dishes standing around.
From the narrow back stoep steps led down to the garden. It extended far back, it seemed to be a large plot. The garden here was equally lush and well maintained, with plants in pots, beds with herbs, a small lawn, a pergola, and half-concealed behind tall shrubs, the pigsties in the furthest back corner. Five pigs were grazing in the garden. Marthinus had in the meantime spotted Nick, and came walking up, rake and secateurs in his hands. He welcomed Nick cordially. Come, he said, he’d make them some tea.
Two little mugs were neatly set out on the tray, with doily. Sugar bowl, milk jug, rusks in a bowl. (Everything very domestic, quite different from his own set-up, Nick could see, which was empty and chaotic at the same time.) He wondered why he was surprised – what had he expected – a pigsty because Marthinus dealt with pigs?
A strong wind had come up suddenly, the little boy who’d been playing on the stoep was now watching a children’s programme on the large flatscreen television set in the other corner of the sitting room, and Marthinus suggested that they might as well have their tea in his bedroom. His room was spacious and crepuscular. Wooden floors, high ceiling. Bed in one corner, wooden table under the big window facing the mountain. On the table an Apple laptop. Here, too, a Nguni hide on the floor. Two handsome Art Deco easy chairs and a leather armchair. Against one of the walls was a large built-in bookshelf, chock-a-block to the ceiling. Marthinus placed the tray on the large wooden table, pulled up the two easy chairs. Nothing scanty about this room.
‘Who’s living here with you?’ Nick asked. (The tea was exceptionally good.)
‘It’s my house, but my friend Alfons rents part of it from me, he and his wife, Rosita, and his child, the little boy you saw in the sitting room.’
‘Who is the gardener?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ said Marthinus. ‘I’m the chief gardener here, pig-herd, general janitor and houseboy – you could say.’
Which still did not give Nick a clear picture of Marthinus’ position, or the nature of his work (there was clearly no shortage here). But, as if attracted by a magnet, his eye suddenly fell, in the over-stuffed bookshelf diagonally across from him, on a copy of The Shallows. Well, did you ever, so Marthinus actually had a copy of the book. The second time in a few days that he’d been reminded of Victor.
‘I see you have a copy of The Shallows,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Marthinus, ‘oh Lord. That massive compendium of dissolution. Brilliant.’
‘Did you ever know Victor Schoeman?’ Nick asked.
‘Yes,’ said Marthinus. ‘I knew him. Not well, but I knew him.’ He rolled himself a cigarette. ‘A tormented fellow, oh Lord. A man whose left hand did not know what his right hand was up to. Not a man to whom to entrust one’s secrets. A destructive fellow if ever I met one.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Nick, laconically.
‘And conflicted!’ said Marthinus. ‘Now there you have a psyche set up like two enemy factions against each other. Also not someone that you could – and that’s an understatement – count on.’
‘Did you ever know Blinky Booysen?’ Nick asked.
‘I did!’ said Marthinus. ‘What became of him?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Nick. ‘There are all sorts of stories.’
‘Perhaps he and Victor went into exile together and started a business somewhere in Equatorial Africa.’ He uttered his short, cheerful chuckle. ‘Where they bamboozle the locals in every possible way. Mistahs Kurtz, they revived.’
‘Unlikely,’ said Nick. ‘They couldn’t stand each other.’
‘Blinky,’ Marthinus said meditatively. ‘Made beautiful stuff. An exceptional guy.’
‘Yes,’ Nick said. ‘Almost everything I know about painting I learned from him.’
‘My goodness, really?!’ said Marthinus, and regarded him for a moment with intensified interest.
‘Coincidentally,’ said Nick, ‘I received a postcard from Victor Schoeman a few days ago in which he asks if I still have any extra copies of The Shallows. I stored the books for years in boxes in my garage. Schlepped them with me everywhere, truth to tell.’
‘Do you still have these copies?’ Marthinus asked.
‘I got rid of the lot a few years ago, after hearing nothing from Victor for a very long time.’
‘How long has Victor been out of the country?’
‘For a long time, as far as I know,’ said Nick. ‘Late nineties. A while after the publication of The Shallows.’
‘Where was the card posted?’
‘It’s not clear, but it’s got a South African