LITMIR.BIZ

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for advice. I’ve made my bed and I should lie in it, but then after what’s just happened . . .

       I promised to love and obey this man. My husband. The love has dried up, but I do my best. He does his bit too, he pays for our son who has cerebral palsy and is in a special needs home.

       The beatings only happen when he is drunk or jealous. If I don’t fight back it’s not too bad. He says he is sorry afterwards, which in an odd way I believe, and that he won’t do it again, which I don’t. Sometimes something snaps. I think it has something to do with his own father and with his time in the army. He has nightmares about the army. Not that I’m making excuses for him – I’m just saying he’s not a monster.

      My mouth was dry and I stood up, leaving the half-read letter on the chair. I went inside and poured myself a glass of water from the fridge. My hands were shaking a bit. My chest hurt as I swallowed. It happens when I drink cold water too fast. I went back to the letter in the garden and carried on reading.

       The beatings are about once a month. The sex once a week. So I have twenty-five days a month when he doesn’t bother me much. I have a lot of happy hours with my woman friend, who comes to visit when he is out. I work only two mornings a week, so am at home a lot. She and I have a kind of love for each other, though I prefer to keep it platonic.

       She gave me the ducks. Three white ornamental ducks. We fixed up the pond for them to swim in.

       Those ducks were the first things I’ve ever loved in a totally pure way. Without guilt or pain. Pure bright joy. I could just watch them for hours. Swimming. Waddling. Rooting in the grass. Lying with their beaks tucked into their feathers.

       He shot them.

       All three of them.

       With his fucking shotgun.

       They were sleeping.

       I wanted to kill him. I grabbed a kitchen knife and ran at him. He held my arms, until I’d cried myself into exhaustion.

       My husband had drunk a bottle of Klipdrift brandy. He was jealous of my friend and of the ducks. But the final straw was the curry I made. He said the lamb was tough and the curry too spicy. He said I didn’t care about him. He was right on both counts.

       Could you please give me a recipe for a good mutton curry?

       And any other advice?

       Yours sincerely

       Bereft woman

      I sat there for a long time with the letter on my lap, looking at my veldskoene, remembering things I didn’t want to remember. The sun slowly chased me out of the shadow and I felt its warmth on my legs and shoulders. But I was shivering and felt cold. Then suddenly I was hot, the sun burning my skin. A wind rustled the leaves in the tree and I stood up and went inside.

      There were unhappy feelings in my tummy. I ate the last frozen banana, and it pushed aside those feelings. I couldn’t feel much other than chocolate bananas in my stomach any more. But my mind, my mind was still going where I didn’t want it to go. My hands were shaking again.

      I made myself a big mug of coffee with lots of sugar and took it outside to the stoep table, with the woman’s letter and my pen and paper. I thought the sweet coffee would pull me right. But even after that whole mug of coffee I still felt down. I was full of a sadness that I couldn’t shake off. All those years that I had spent with a man who was much the same as her husband. Not exactly the same. He had not shot my ducks. I did not have ducks. Or a good friend to give me white ducks. And my beatings were more like once a week, and the forced sex once a month. If I was lucky. But still the story felt the same. Even the Klipdrift brandy was the same. I didn’t ever run at him with a knife. And I didn’t leave him. I had been scared of dying. And scared of living too.

      When Fanie got a heart attack and died, something broke free in me. But while he was alive, I just could not escape. Even the priest at our church said it was my duty to stay by my husband, so I stayed and stayed.

      I hoped this woman would not do the same. I picked up my pen. We would of course not print what she wrote, but we could publish a recipe and a letter from me. I spent a long time working out what to say: writing and crossing out. It took me two hours and a bowl of mango sorbet. In the end I said:

       I lived for too many years with a man that beat me. Bruises and bones can heal. But the heart, the heart can be damaged for ever. Love is a precious thing. If you are with a man who abuses you, you should leave him. I know there are many reasons why it is hard. But you can find a way.

       You can do better than I did. You can save your heart.

      Then I wrote out my best recipe for a slow-cooked lamb curry. (My mind jumped to a duck muscadel dish, but of course I didn’t write it.) You will find the mutton curry recipe at the end of the book, with all the other recipes. It is a very tender and delicious curry with excellent sambals.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      A couple of weeks later I was walking in my veldskoene down the path to the office, in the morning heat. I could hear voices as I got close to the door.

      ‘That’s super-duper,’ said Hattie, ‘I knew you could write a great fête article.’

      ‘Ag, Hattie, please. Now, the story I wanted to discuss with you. Local farming practices and how overgrazing and pesticides are totally mucking up the ecosystems— ’

      ‘Maria,’ Hattie said, clapping her hands together as she saw me, ‘just look at that pile of letters on your desk. Isn’t it marvellous?’

      I stood under the ceiling fan and felt the air dry the sweat on my face and neck. My brown cotton dress felt rumpled and sticky though it was perfect when I put it on this morning. Hattie was sitting at her desk and she brushed a speck of dirt off her smooth apricot cotton trousers. I don’t know how she always managed to look so smart. Jessie grinned as she handed me a glass of cold water. Her smile was bright in her round brown face.

      ‘Dankie, skat,’ I said and gave her a Tupperware. ‘Bobotie for you.’

      ‘Ooh, lekker,’ Jessie said, and put it in the small fridge.

      She stood for a moment with the fridge door open, and lifted her thick ponytail up, away from her black vest. She let the air cool her face and the back of her neck.

      Girl on fire, sang Jessie’s cell phone. She took it out of its pouch and pressed a button which turned the song off.

      ‘Just a reminder,’ she said.

      ‘Goodness, Jess. We don’t need reminders that it’s hot,’ said Hattie.

      ‘No,’ said Jessie, smiling. ‘It’s reminding me to check on a certain website that should be ready by now . . . ’

      She went and clicked some buttons on her computer. I sat down at my desk with my glass of cool water. It had been two weeks since we’d started the column and the letters were flowing in. A lot of people were hungry for my recipes and advice. It was quite a responsibility, but I was enjoying it. When I gave someone a recipe, I usually cooked it for myself too. When I wasn’t writing, I was cooking. More than I could eat myself. Sometimes I froze the extra food; often I brought it to Jessie.

      I put down my glass and picked up the thick handful of letters on my desk.

      ‘Jinne,’ I said. ‘How am I going to choose?’

      I laid them out like a solitaire game on my desk. There was only space to print one or two letters per week, and I felt bad for the people I couldn’t answer. Some of them gave addresses, and I sent them replies. But most of them didn’t.

      ‘Maria, darling, we’ve been working on your problem,’ said Hattie. She looked

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