doesn’t matter what they’re going to see, any film is an experience at the Alhambra, which looks like Aladdin’s fairytale castle. The balconies and ornate pillars on the gold-painted exterior, the enormous hall with soft velvet seats inside, the fake trees that look just like real ones and the ceiling that reminds one of a dark blue night sky with millions of twinkling stars, all of it is a marvel in Colette’s eyes. But now, unfortunately, she has to buy bloomers first.
Hours later, or so it seems to Colette, they have at long last bought the underwear and her cut-out doll and Sina’s headscarf. They are seated in Stuttafords’ tea room, on the balcony overlooking Adderley Street, and Mammie orders scones with strawberry jam and cream. Colette picks the tallest, fattest slice of chocolate cake she has ever seen. While they wait for the waitress to bring the tray, Colette admires her Judy Garland paper doll and pages through the booklet with all the clothes she will cut out when she gets home. She is happiest about the Wizard of Oz outfit, a light blue pinafore over a white blouse with puffed sleeves, a red bow for the hair exactly like Snow White’s, light blue socks and, of course, the sparkling red shoes. Oh, for a pair of red shoes with heels like these! ‘If I ever have another fancy dress, I want to dress like Dorothy,’ she says with a dreamy sigh.
‘Hmmm,’ her mother says. ‘Hopefully this time half the guests won’t turn up dressed like Voortrekkers.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that, Mammie. Where we live now most of the children don’t even know what a Voortrekker looks like. It is a good thing my name at least sounds a little English or the girls next door wouldn’t want to play with me.’
‘Colette isn’t English,’ Mammie says with her nose in the air. ‘It is French.’
‘Why did you give me a French name?’
‘Because it goes with Cronjé. And because both Deddy and I are descended from the Huguenots.’
‘But why Colette? Rather than …’ She hastily tries to think of other French names, and remembers about the queen who lost her head. ‘Rather than Antoinette or Suzette or something like that?’
‘I once read a story by a French writer named Colette and I thought it was pretty …’ Mammie smiles a little sheepishly, which makes her look like a young girl. Then she touches her swept-up hair under the soldier’s cap and asks: ‘Surely you wouldn’t have preferred that we named you after one of your grandmothers? Gertruida Aletta or Johanna Magdalena?’
‘No,’ Colette giggles behind her hand, ‘I would rather be Colette. I just wanted to …’
The roar of a cannon close by gives her such a fright she swallows the rest of her words. The Nazis, is her first wild thought, as hundreds of pigeons take off from the window ledges and roofs of the buildings around them. She waits for the customers in the tea room to dive under the tables with their hands over their heads, the way the children were taught at school, but to her astonishment something even stranger happens. Instead of jumping up and rushing around and falling down flat, everyone seems petrified. No one moves, even the waitress who was on her way over with the tray with their tea and scones and chocolate cake, freezes on the spot as if she has turned into a statue. A hushed silence fills the air. Colette glances down at Adderley Street and realises that all the pedestrians have also turned to stone.
It is the strangest sight.
She opens her mouth to ask what is going on, but her mother gestures sh! with a finger on her lips and stares intently at the tablecloth. Most people are looking down, as if they are deep in thought. Or as if they have fallen asleep with their eyes open?
Then all at once everyone starts talking and eating and drinking again – just as suddenly as when they turned to stone – and the pedestrians on Adderley Street also come back to life. The waitress fusses around them arranging the teacups on the table, and within seconds there are so many voices and city noises filling Colette’s ears that she wonders if perhaps it has all been a dream.
‘Mammie?’ she asks dazed.
‘That was the noon gun, Colette.’ Her mother’s thinly tweezed eyebrows pencil two arches high on her forehead. ‘Don’t tell me you have never heard it before?’
Colette shakes her head. ‘But why did everyone freeze?’
‘Oh, it’s the two-minute silence,’ her mother explains while she pours their tea, ‘to remember everyone who has died in the war.’
Colette drags the enormous slice of chocolate cake closer, a strange hollow feeling in her stomach. ‘Only our dead people? Or the Nazis’ dead people too?’
‘I don’t know if one can talk of “ours” and “theirs” when it comes to death, sweetheart. Dead is dead.’
She is suddenly not sure she can finish such a big piece of cake by herself. ‘Do you know someone who has died in the war, Mammie?’
‘No one close to me, not yet, thank goodness.’ Her mother blinks her eyes quickly and takes a sip of tea. She is probably thinking of Uncle David in North Africa. ‘Let us hope and pray that it is all over before Ouboet is old enough to enlist.’
‘He won’t,’ Colette says reassuringly. ‘I heard him say to Kleinboet that he won’t go and fight for England. He said maybe Oom Kleingert was right, maybe the Nazis weren’t the enemy …’
Mammie’s hands flutter from her teacup to her cheeks that have suddenly turned as pale as death, and she closes her eyes as if she has seen something that is too terrible to contemplate.
And suddenly Colette would give up anything – her new Judy Garland paper doll, Bambi at the Alhambra, even this entire excursion to town – if she could only take back her words. She will have to learn to hold her tongue, like Mammie always tells her. Sometimes silence is golden, Colette.
Silence?
• Colette Niemand 9/8/2007
To ?
Sometimes silence is golden? My darling child, I long to write to you, I long to say no, I do not know Lisbon’s lovely Metro stations, nor the long graceful bridge over the Tagus, it was all built after my time. The same is true of the statue of Fernando Pessoa at his little outdoor cafe table. When I was there the melancholy poet had not yet risen from the dead to amuse tourists. No one really knew of him yet, except other melancholy souls like my beloved guide.
But now it seems as if that guide has also risen from the dead. And it makes me so anxious that I am struck dumb all over again. Surely I cannot write that I do not share your sweet dreams, that I have been troubled by ghosts from the past again these last few nights? Portuguese ghosts, of course, but much older wandering spirits too. Deddy in the days he still wore his little Hitler moustache; Mammie always whispering sh, what will the people say; my beautiful uncle who fled to Australia; they all came to disturb my sleep last night.
Uncle David crushed a piece of chocolate cake in his fist and smeared the brown icing over the scars on his face, his once handsome face so horribly disfigured that I only recognised him by his soldier’s uniform. ‘I bear the wounds of the battles I fought,’ he said reproachfully. ‘But the worst wounds are those you cannot see.’ I shut my eyes and stopped my ears but I could still hear him, like a voice inside my own head. Now that I am dead, he said, I regret everything that I missed.
I woke up drenched in sweat, my skin on fire, feverish. I expect I am coming down with something. Is it possible to get sick from remembering?
