pottery, tools, weapons, fossils, menageries and trophies that represented some aspect of the country’s past. Emil was evidently enjoying himself and so Gemma let him peruse at his leisure … until she heard him wheeze as he stood before a miniature bungalow that looked very much like the government-issued house that had been their home at the foot of the Matopos Hills. Probably all the dust in the place, Gemma supposed as she led Emil out of the museum. Hopefully he would feel better at the theatre and they could carry on enjoying the day.
They did not even make it to the intermission of Anything Goes. Emil’s wheezing had at first attracted sympathetic glances that became a few glares here and there and finally a united voice that loudly whispered, ‘I judge that it is best you take the poor fellow home.’
Gemma obeyed the wishes of the many, held Emil by the hand, walked him back up Selborne Avenue to the Prince’s Mansions and led him up the stairs. She opened the door to the flat, immediately stopped short, let out a scream and was very surprised when no sound came out.
When Emil saw his father in his mother’s red cloche hat, black lace and chiffon drop-waist dress, string of pearls, rouge and lipstick, he assumed it was a joke, something funny his father had prepared for his departure, and he was just about to laugh when he saw the look of absolute horror on his mother’s face. When he glanced over at his father and saw the guilt, humiliation and shame on his face, Emil was filled with dread and knew that, whatever this was, it was not supposed to be happening.
Gemma let go of Emil’s hand and went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She left father and son staring at each other. With the comforting aroma of cottage pie wafting between them, Johan’s eyes travelled to a spot just above Emil’s head and settled there, and there his gaze would remain whenever he looked at his son. Gemma returned with Emil’s medication and gave it to him. She then went to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.
The quiet that surrounded them was absolute.
After what Johan had done, both he and Gemma were afraid of what the other would say, so they stopped speaking to each other altogether. In this way she never had to ask him about what she had witnessed and he, therefore, thankfully, never had to explain himself to her or to himself.
Emil was left alone in the confusion of the peace.
CHAPTER 4
Emil had seen the Selous School for Boys in his mind’s eye every day since he had learnt that he was to attend it. At night, he created dreamscapes in which the school was a sprawling and rambling grey Gothic building, complete with gargoyles as grotesque and ghastly as the ones he had seen on the picture postcard of Sanssouci in Potsdam, Germany, that was on Mr Bartleby’s desk. To heighten his trepidation, the school was, for whatever reason, situated in the middle of a moat that had a healthy population of piranhas living in it. As a result, Emil’s impression of the place was that there was no prospect of his ever being happy there.
Not a word was spoken during the long journey to the Midlands in the car his father had borrowed from Scott Fitzgerald, which did not help matters because what Emil needed more than anything else at that moment was the gentle cushion that his parents’ voices would have provided. His mother, sitting beside him in the back seat, had simply put her white-gloved right hand over his bare hands, smiled feebly at him and then stared out of the window. His father, sitting in the driver’s seat, would, by peering at the rear-view mirror, periodically steal glances at the space above Emil’s head and satisfy himself that all was well enough with his son.
As he sat there, as silent as a sphynx, Emil wondered what it was exactly that had been witnessed by his mother and him the day before and why it could not be spoken of. But, in lieu of asking this question, Emil gazed out of the window and attempted to console himself with the changing landscape: city, suburbs, smallholdings, farms, villages and, finally and refreshingly, wide open spaces with singing elephant grass.
As their journey carried them closer and closer to the grey Gothic castle with gargoyles, Emil gradually grasped that, whether he was ready to or not, he was growing up. He came to understand that this was his first step away from his parents and this terrified him more than the nightmares he had had of the Selous School for Boys. The momentousness of the occasion having dawned on him, Emil’s stomach, long queasy, lurched and he quickly squeezed his mother’s hand twice, which was his new way of communicating to her that he needed to relieve himself in a nearby bush. She, in turn, tapped the back of the driver’s seat and his father promptly parked the car on the side of the road.
Emil walked into the singing elephant grass by himself and had not walked far when he vomited all the three meals that the Coetzees had stopped to eat in silence at lay-by stations along the way. Although he felt physically better afterwards, he was not yet ready to go back to the car and join the silence of his parents. Thankfully, he heard voices in the distance and walked towards them until he saw an African homestead. A celebration. Women cooking on open fires. Men drinking from shared calabashes. Children chasing a tyre. Much conversation and lots of laughter. For a brief, mad moment, Emil contemplated joining them and partaking in their joy and happiness. But of course he could not.
He was about to turn back when he saw them – a hen and a chick straying dangerously far away from the homestead and towards the unknown environs around it. The chick seemed to apprehend the danger better than its mother, for it showed every sign of being anxious; it stayed close to her and wove itself between her legs even though on more than one occasion it had been pushed aside by her scratching feet. Frantic, the chick flew and landed on its mother’s back. It could not stay there for long, though, and soon fell down, only to play at her feet again.
Emil could not save himself from the fate that lay in wait for him but he could definitely save the chick, and so he moved abruptly in the elephant grass, making a sound that the chicken sensibly ran away from. The chick ran gratefully after its mother and away from danger, but, sadly, not away from its mother’s indifference.
Emil could not help but cry and, as he cried, he vowed to himself that this would be the last time that he would ever cry because, in that moment, he realised that tears did not change the workings of the world.
The Selous School for Boys, founded in the Midlands in 1918, was not the Gothic castle of Emil’s dreams but a series of red-roofed, white colonial-style buildings of varying size and stature that stood immaculately in a tranquil, lush and verdant valley. The school’s proud motto, ‘It is here that boys become the men of history’, was the banner that one drove under as one entered the school’s premises. Emil read the school’s motto and was glad and relieved that it was not written in Latin. The school had the appearance of being welcoming enough, but Emil was not fooled; he had recently learnt that things were not always what they appeared to be on the surface.
Besides, Emil was only nine years old. What business did he have becoming a man?
Johan parked Scott Fitzgerald’s car in the parking berth, where there was much ado as various families lumbered out of cars, struggled with trunks and made both gregarious and polite conversation. There were boys as young as six who seemed to have been swallowed whole by their uniforms, there were boys of about Emil’s age who were all knobby knees and wide eyes, there were boys of about thirteen and fourteen who were determined to help their fathers carry their trunks, there were boys of sixteen and seventeen whose malicious eyes searched the crowd for newcomers. All these boys were to spend the next years of their lives together, becoming men. Emil felt sick to his stomach and was rather glad that he had already expelled its contents, otherwise this would have been a very unfortunate beginning indeed.
Once in the dormitory, Johan found Emil’s bed and put his trunk, which he had laboured with up the staircase, next to it. Gemma made up the bed with the linen they found folded at the foot of the bed. Emil removed select
