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      Ingrid

      Winterbach

      The Shallows

      Translated by Michiel Heyns

      Human & Rousseau

      For Lou-Marié Kruger

      One

      The time there was sacred. That is how I see it in retrospect. (Is sacred a word commonly occurring in my vocabulary? No.) Whatever happened before or after, that time was sacred. Sacred! I’ll never forget it. It’s engraved on my heart. It was cold. It was raining that day when Willem Wepener and I went to view Jacobus’ body. (You didn’t want to go along. You don’t want to remember him like that, you said.) In the reception area of the undertakers there was a large reproduction of a lioness with her cubs, also several examples of wreaths and two receptionists with expressions of permanent piety. A man took us through the building, out by the back door, through puddles of rainwater, to a small back room (hardly designed for the viewing of bodies). A transparent dark-green chintz Mr Price curtain against one wall. A cement floor, cold. There Jacobus lies, in his coffin. God, as still as death! On Willem’s face an expression of unspeakable sorrow. For a long time he stands motionlessly gazing at the body.

      I spend the first night with you so that you won’t have to be on your own. Willem prepares food. He comes in from outside, half-frozen, with provisions. His cheeks are pale, there are dark rings under his eyes. We sit huddled together around the dining-room table. The food and the wine console us. Late at night I shower and at last, half-drunk, crawl between the ice-cold sheets. The day breaks dismayingly soon. I’m still clinging to the night. My first thought: Nothing will ever bring him back. A sacred time, engraved on my heart for ever.

      In the course of my life I’ve done irresponsible things. I have at times been dishonest and unfaithful. But I am loyal to those I love. Willem and I are standing in the little back room. With the back of my hand I touch Jacobus’ cold cheek. The flesh does not respond. I touch my fingers lightly to his chest, just below the tip of the breastbone. The flesh feels like clay. It’s as if my fingertips are still primed for the slightest indication of life – the tiniest undulation of the chest – and as if my fingers cannot comprehend the absolute immobility of the body. Next to me Willem stands motionless; I have never seen him so unmoving. For him touching is taboo, he says. He just stands gazing with the expression on his face of unspeakable sorrow.

      *

      I was born with a cleft palate and a harelip. I have a broad, flattish nose, a narrow forehead and hair as abundant as that of a Catholic saint. During the sixth to tenth week of pregnancy the bones and sutures of the upper jaw, nose and mouth are supposed to knit, to form the palate and upper lip. When that does not happen, the baby is born with a cleft palate and a harelip. I suspect that I was an unwanted pregnancy, and that my mother had tried to abort me during the embryonic phase. I was never told this in so many words, it is something I discerned intuitively. On account of the cleft palate and harelip I couldn’t drink properly as a baby and I had trouble learning to talk. As a result I was a furious and frustrated child. Which didn’t make it any easier for my mother – nineteen years old, with an unwelcome, unprepossessing baby, and a girl on top of that. I was operated upon. The cleft palate was repaired. But the scar of the corrected harelip is more prominent than it should be. People of both sexes find me sexually either irresistible or repulsive.

      After Jacobus’ death I packed my bags, let my house, and left for a while. I could not stand staying on in a town where mountain and tree alike are indifferent to every human vicissitude.

      Two

      The girl came to call him one morning.

      There’s a pig in the garden, she said.

      Side by side they stood on the stoep contemplating the creature. A big, black pig serenely grazing. Just as well he hadn’t started gardening yet.

      Where did she think it came from? Where would it have found its way into the yard?

      She didn’t know. (Although for some reason he thought she did know, but didn’t want to tell.)

      Didn’t she want to take a photo, for her portfolio?

      No. She didn’t photograph pigs. Pigs were bad luck.

      Says who?

      The people where she came from.

      What kind of bad luck?

      That she couldn’t tell. Any kind.

      Like what? he persisted.

      She didn’t want to say. It was bad luck to talk about bad luck, she said.

      She believed that?

      She wasn’t going to take any chances.

      This morning he found her pretty, this girl with the abundant hair and the soft, tea-coloured skin.

      They say pigs are very intelligent, he said.

      So is the devil, she said.

      Oh yes, he said, and did she believe in the devil?

      She said nothing, just smiled slightly. (He suspected she was pulling his leg.)

      Later the pig lay down in the shade of a shrub. Perhaps a suitable subject for a painting, but he was no painter of pigs, or people. The new house still had a chaotic feel to it. The sitting room was filled with unemptied boxes. He remained conscious of the pig in the garden, in the shade. He hadn’t yet tried to find the place next to the fence where it might have got in.

      In the late morning someone appeared at the gate. A man. He’d come to collect his pig, he saw it lying in the garden. The man had a big, open, attractive face. Amiable. Trusting. Tanned.

      He didn’t know one was allowed to keep pigs in a residential area, said Nick.

      He had a big plot, up there, against the mountainside, he gestured with his shoulder.

      ‘Marthinus Scheepers,’ he said, extending his hand.

      ‘Nick Steyn.’

      The man’s grip was firm. Probably needed to be, to keep pigs in check.

      ‘Come by sometime,’ said Marthinus, ‘come meet the other pigs.’ (He uttered a short, cheerful chuckle.)

      There was something about the man. The big, harmoniously sculpted head and features. A noble face. Had something gone wrong, was he feeding with the pigs now?

      ‘Does the pig have a name?’ Nick asked.

      ‘President Burgers,’ Marthinus said. ‘Primus inter porcos. A true leader. A pig of destiny.’

      ‘I see,’ said Nick.

      Man and pig departed. Almost near-neighbours. He’d have to go and see. Something about the man, something about the pig. Both with something distinguished about them? Both of them noble of countenance and harmonious of proportion.

      *

      Nick had recently bought this house in Tamboerskloof. He didn’t work there, was renting a studio in Observatory for the time being. Well out of Stellenbosch, that hotbed of complacency; a fresh start, after the breakdown of the relationship with Isabel. He’d hardly moved in, when a girl knocked at his front door one morning. She’d heard that he had rooms to rent. Where had she heard that? From the woman at the gallery. He’d hardly even breathed the possibility of rental, and already there was a potential lodger on his doorstep. The girl was wearing black velvet trousers, scuffed boots, a baby-blue fleece top that looked like a pyjama top. Her hair curled and twirled wildly around her head as if she’d just hitchhiked here on dusty roads. Her eyes were alert. Her name was Charelle Koopman. She didn’t look much older than twenty. She was doing a photography course at the Peninsula Academy of Art. This was her first year. She took her studies seriously. Where was she from? he asked. From the West Coast, Veldenburg. But she’d been in Cape Town since the previous year. The next day she moved into the spacious back room.

      And

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