LITMIR.BIZ

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heard of it, Ma?’

      ‘With Dustin Hoffman?’ Ma seldom went to the movies these days but she greedily absorbed every bit of scandal about Hollywood stars in all her favourite magazines. ‘He’s so short and dull! I know I’m old-fashioned, but I still like a leading man to look like a leading man!’

      ‘Like Clark Gable or Rock Hudson,’ I mumbled, my mouth full of rusk.

      ‘Like Clark Gable or Rock Hudson,’ Ma agreed seriously.

      The moment Ma’s shiny blue kimono disappeared round the door, Dalena jumped up to sit cross-legged on my bed, almost on top of me.

      ‘Tell me honestly, Mart,’ she said urgently. ‘Tell me if you think I stand a chance.’

      ‘Of what?’

      I sucked the coffee out of a soaked rusk and put out my hand to switch on the radio on my bedside table. It was my first ever opportunity to tease my roommate. I had to admit it was a pleasant sensation.

      ‘Do you think there’s a chance, no matter how small …’

      She got no further because Niel and Lovey ran yelling into the room. Niel held his arms protectively over his head while Lovey made a frustrated grab at his hair. It was only when she tickled him under his arms and he laughingly dropped his hands that we saw he had tied one of those long, old-fashioned sanitary towels on to his head, the loops hooked around his ears. I caught Dalena’s eye and we tacitly agreed that we wouldn’t laugh at such a childish joke.

      But I had difficulty keeping a straight face. Where had he found the thing? Ma had had that operation a long time ago and Lovey …

      ‘Mart, tell Niel to grow up!’ Lovey yelled when Niel grabbed her hands.

      ‘Niel, Lovey says you must grow up!’

      Dalena gave up the struggle and started laughing. Pleased, Niel turned his head towards us and with his attention diverted for a moment, Lovey jerked the sanitary towel off his head so roughly that he seemed in danger of losing his ears. He screamed like the victim in a bad murder movie and fled, laughing.

      ‘Men!’ Breathlessly Lovey sank down on the bed opposite Dalena and me. She clutched the towel like a trophy. I still couldn’t believe that my baby sister could be the owner of this strange object. ‘If only they knew what it is to be a woman …’

      I also fell into helpless laughter.

      ‘But, Lovey, that thing is miles too big for you.’

      ‘I know,’ she said, mortified. ‘But Ma says I’m too young for the kind that you push in …’

      ‘But doesn’t Ma know about the new kind that you stick on?’

      ‘Lovey!’ Simon called from somewhere in the house. Lovey and Dalena both jerked upright.

      ‘He said I could go with him to buy the Sunday papers,’ Lovey said before disappearing. ‘Ciao.’

      The sanitary towel was left lying on the bed like an ugly, stranded boat.

      ‘This morning she’s under the impression that she’s in an Italian movie,’ I said to Dalena.

      ‘Why didn’t he ask me to go with him?’ Dalena wanted to know.

      I turned up the volume on the radio and hummed ‘Sorrow’ along with David Bowie. Simon said his son’s name was Zowie, Zowie Bowie. It would be quite fun to have a name like that, Simon said, especially in the army. Sapper Zowie Bowie.

      ‘He probably didn’t even notice me!’

      ‘It’s quite difficult not to notice you, Dalena,’ I consoled her. ‘You’re not exactly a shrinking violet.’

      ‘Maybe he likes shrinking violets?’

      ‘If you really want to know, I think he likes anything that wears a skirt. Especially after three months in the army.’

      She fell on to her back with a sigh that sounded as if it had been fished from the depths of her stomach and folded her hands behind her head.

      ‘Listen, Dalena,’ I said, my eyes on her bare legs, ‘I don’t want to interfere …’

      ‘Then don’t.’

      ‘But I must warn you …’

      I didn’t know how to say it without sounding stupid. Do it fast, I thought, as fast as possible. ‘Don’tletmybrothermisuseyou.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ Her mouth trembled as she tried to control a smile.

      ‘You know very well what I mean.’

      ‘I don’t care what your brother does to me, Mart!’ The smile spread. We were back in our usual roles, Dalena the teaser, I the teased. ‘This is the first time since Miss Lourens’s brother that I’ve had this ticklish feeling in my body.’

      ‘Where in your body?’ I asked warily.

      But she just laughed. And I felt as if I had pushed a car to get it started, with great difficulty, only to be left behind while the occupants drove away.

      London

       30 September 1992

      Dear Child

      John Lennon is singing ‘Imagine’ on the radio in my narrow London house with a front door that opens on to a pavement, and a back garden smaller than a British pound note. Just imagine there’s no heaven.

      I hear that seventies music is becoming popular again. And the fashions keep popping up on the streets. Is nothing exempt from the irrational power of nostalgia?

      An election is being held in Angola today which could change everything. Perhaps there will be an end to the war that has torn the country apart for so many decades. On the other hand, perhaps nothing will change. Things might even get worse. However unthinkable that might seem.

      It’s easy if you try, John Lennon sings. I introduced my son to him today. Why, I don’t know, but it was the one figure in Madame Tussaud’s famous Wax Museum that caught his almost three-year-old attention. Maybe he became aware of his mother’s nostalgia (back to bloody nostalgia again) as we stood in front of the four young men with their dark mop-heads, narrow ties, and identical jackets tidily buttoned. Or a nostalgia emerging from the depths of the collective subconscious of an entire generation?

      ‘And here we have John Lennon,’ I said, and never got to the other three Beatles because my son stretched out his arms to grab John Lennon’s legs. ‘But you’re not allowed to touch him.’

      He was determined to touch him. I tried to pull him away but he began screaming. I looked around, saw no security guard and allowed him to touch, quickly, and with a dirty hand, John Lennon’s leg.

      It wasn’t good enough. He screamed so loudly that we had to end the excursion right there, before we could even get a proper look at Madonna or Michael Jackson. Which perhaps was also fitting, I consoled myself on the Underground on the way home. My taste in pop music never really developed beyond December 1980. On that day, when John Lennon was shot by one of his crazy admirers, I knew that the seventies had really ended. The day the music died.

      The biggest danger in Angola, I read in the newspaper, is that Unita or the MPLA will refuse to accept the result of the election. Then the civil war and the bloodshed will continue. Until there are no civilians left to kill? Until there is no blood left to flow? The most likely candidate for such a tactic is Unita, which has kept guerrilla operations going year after year with massive logistic and military support from Pretoria.

      Pierre was right, after all. He had the irritating habit of always being right. Now I wonder whether he would have been able to forecast how long South Africans would still have to wait for a free election.

      Imagine it, my dear child. Just imagine it!

      M.

      Конец

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