The Shouting in the Dark (15 page)

For the first time in years he holds her gaze.

‘Yes,
meid
, you've got it – you and me, we write to Brezhnev. He's bound to have a better idea of how to proceed than these interfering do-gooders. Like our Nat buffoons here, he talks tough but also acts tough. He knows how to keep hold of power by whatever clever means short of cruelty and perhaps not even then.'

Early that Saturday Ella and the father sit down to write their letter to Mr Brezhnev at the glass-topped table on the verandah, a Croxley Cambric writing pad open between them, a fresh piece of sticky carbon paper slid under the top page. Their unfamiliar solidarity makes her skin prickle. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him scrub at the sweat on his forehead with his hanky. She averts her eyes. She doesn't like to think about the sweat droplets running like abacus beads along his Brylcreme-polished hair.

The mother brings the father his morning coffee, iced for the heat, then retreats indoors. ‘Told you to switch that television . . .' she murmurs in Dutch, as if to herself, lips pursed in disapproval.

‘Come,' the father draws his Bic from his pocket and hands it to Ella. ‘You're quick with your pen, good at English. Write now,
Dear Mr Brezhnev
, and make sure the carbon paper's taking. We must do a copy for Mr Vorster. We've nothing to hide. We're proposing only what's good for the nation and will make us stronger. Everywhere but in South Africa and the Soviet Union and its allies, the world's going down the pan. South Africa must learn from the strong-arm example of the Soviets, like the Cubans do, rather than yammering about insurgents on the border.'

Ella takes the pen. Most days the look of the father's Bic grates on her. Its chunky shape reminds her, she doesn't know why, of his gnarled middle fingers. Today she just takes the pen, there are no grating feelings. She watches as he checks the carbon, squares it up.

‘Come,' he says again, pushes the pad closer. ‘The point we must make is that the Soviets' communism isn't an obstacle for us. You watch, the moment communism becomes unviable for the Soviets and drains the state coffers, they'll drop it. Politics works like this. It means making up a more difficult crossword when the one you're doing is no longer challenging your brain.'

Beside the writing pad he spreads open a recent copy of the
Elsevier
with the closed trapdoor face of Mr Brezhnev on the cover. Though the
Elsevier
subscription was a gift from his mother-in-law in lily-livered Holland, the father looks forward every month to its arrival. Unlike Dutch politicians, he says, the
Elsevier
doesn't mince its words.

‘He looks like Mr Vorster, Dad, don't you think, though his nose isn't so puffy?'

‘Forget his looks,' says the father, ‘Looks is for girls. Think of joint strategy. Think of what the Leader of All the Soviets wants that we also want. Here in the
Elsevier
is an article, just here, look. It says that the Soviet Union has built new counter-insurgency weaponry, for street fighting and the like, hardware that many countries quelling terrorism would find useful. I suggest we propose a secret arms deal to Mr Brezhnev, where we give some of our heaps of gold in exchange for his smart new armaments. We say that we hope such a deal will provide building blocks for deals in the future.'

Ella tries to pull the magazine towards her but at the same instant the father closes it, presses the flat of his hand on Mr Brezhnev's face.

‘Write now, write,' he says frowning. ‘I've told you what the main article said. Let's not circle around the thing. Say now to Mr Brezhnev: Mr Brezhnev, though we are patriotic South Africans we have long admired the strength of the Soviet Union. The West is lost. In the War – parenthesis, one of us is a veteran – in the War we fought for the values of the West, but the West lost its values and its strength in the very act of trying to protect them.'

‘Dad, not that.' Hasn't she heard words to this effect night after night on the verandah? She places the Bic's tip lightly on the paper. Her body feels clammy. ‘Not so much about the West. Let's think of the Soviets.'

Dear Mr Brezhnev
, she writes,
We approach you as two concerned and patriotic citizens of South Africa with a proposal of mutual benefit to our respective countries. We trust that, as the Leader of All the Soviets, there will be much of interest for you in our suggestion.

Across the morning the father builds the case for his barter plan. He reads out loud the facts and figures he has scratched onto torn-off strips of blotting paper. His bloodless lips work with excitement. From behind his desk he brings a pile of
Elsevier
back-copies, the important pages folded down, lays them on the table in a fan, taps cigarette ash all over them. For each paragraph he speaks, Ella tries to write down a sentence or two.

He says, ‘Did I hear you say not to talk so much about the West, Ella? Never deny the West. You are of the West though African-born, proudly African-born. You are if anything hyper-western.' He lights a fresh Rothman's Plain from the one still alight in the ashtray. ‘This is how it is,
meid
. During the War the ideals that moved the West were betrayed by the West. We fought hard but got back little. The toll was great. In the world today, the inheritors of the Allied cause have squandered what we once fought for. The Allies fought for solid freedoms, wrongly called negative freedoms – freedom from oppression, freedom from harm, freedoms worth fighting for. But lately these freedoms have mutated. The West's ideals moved elsewhere, here to South Africa. What people in the West now want is the freedom to have everything they want, to say only me-me-me. People have forgotten you need a system: you need law and order to be properly free.'

Ella writes:
We admire how your country is run, Mr Brezhnev, especially the firm system of law and order you have. In South Africa, by contrast with other areas of the world, we have a good system of law and order also.

She reads the lines so far back to him. He pulls his lips tight between his teeth. The moment she says
good system
, he looks suddenly happy. He stands and begins to pace, waving his Rothman's Plain in the air. Falling ash settles on his comb-over.

‘There's no freedom without restraint.' His voice rises to a yelp though it's still morning and as far as Ella can tell he's not yet touched the sherry bottle stored with the
Elseviers
behind his desk. ‘There are no rights without binding duties. Rights should be earned. Rights and freedom are meaningless where there's no law and order. In this great cesspit of the permissive society, what then do we do? Are we not permitted to seek alternative possibilities? Of course we are!'

Ella has lost the thread of what he's saying but still she matches the twinkle in his eye with her own.

‘Consider,' he continues, ‘Are we not disgusted at how the military in the Netherlands is permitted to go about with long hair?' Ella nods, twinkles. ‘Well, in our disgust, let's turn to countries where the military keep haircuts decently short, like South Africa, of course, but the Soviet Union also, Cuba too. Are we not appalled at how an entire generation of the young is cooking its brains with acid and other drugs?'

Yes, we are, Ella nods.

‘Well then,' says the father, ‘Let's turn to the Soviet Union again, where drugs are banned and the secret police keep a close eye. I may be an atheist, but the Calvinist views I grew up with have their place. Human beings begin
slecht
and only through hard work become better, like the Calvinists say. And then hardly better. Now, imagine giving a creature as bad and stupid as a human being rights or drugs, rights if they so much as squeak, drugs on demand if they only ask. Give me, give me, they cry. Drugs and more drugs. Well, rubbish,
rotzooi
. The Soviets know that it's wrong. You may as well give people a burning rod with which to put out their eyes.' He spits a gob of grey mucus onto the lawn.

The mother sticks her head around the verandah's French window, produces her camouflage breathing. ‘So loud, Har,' she whispers, ‘Sounds like you're demanding drugs yourself.'

Ella opens to a fresh sheet of Croxley Cambric. The first one is already full. She adjusts the carbon paper, moves the matt-silver Bic across the page:

On the basis of all that our nations share, let us also, we propose, work together on military preparedness. We will have much to gain, on both sides, from the exchange.

‘But the Soviets laugh at us,
meid
. We must capture this, too.' The father flings out his arms, his cigarette butt, as if embracing what she has written. ‘Us squealing, holier-than-thou westerners, the Soviets laugh at us and then they go on working. They hoot at how we squander everything we've achieved. They gloat at our political weakness, our moral weakness. We condone an Idi Amin. We permit, no, we welcome in the international halls of power, Houphouet-Boigny, Boukassa, Mobuto Sese Seko. We couldn't possibly turn these clowns away for we mustn't be seen to judge others. We must at all costs grant crazy men their freedoms. If the Soviet Union thinks at all about its strength relative to the West, it need hardly worry, for the weakness here is now endemic. Yet in respect of South Africa alone does the West wag its finger. So why should South Africa listen, when it's in point of fact the world's custodian of law and order, when it has the stability and cleverness to lock these goods into place?'

Across the weekend the heat persists, the father builds his case, Ella nods, twinkles, writes, chews on the ice in his iced coffee, reads out loud. The letter grows by slow inches. First it is three pages long, then six. She scratches out the sentences he dislikes and fits words between the lines. She squeezes in a good opening sentence about surviving in mad Africa. People survive in mad Africa, she writes, by outdoing it at its madness. Isn't this what the father's been saying from the start?

On Sunday morning the father finds an
Elsevier
feature article comparing staple diets across the world. The child with the most food in its belly when it sets out to school lives in Moscow, he cries, cawing like a hadeda, whereas in Holland and similar countries they have cardboard food without substance,
rotzooi
, rubbish American fluff.

‘But of course they cannot be denied their rubbish,' he shouts, ‘They must be free to choose to eat badly, though the national fibre's degenerating by the day.'

On Sunday evening Ella reads the full draft of the letter to the father. She is in the second rattan chair. He rocks the balls of his feet across the verandah edge.

Mr Brezhnev, there are, in short, multiple ways in which the Soviet Union and South Africa can support one another
, she ends.
There is more that unites our two nations than divides us. Quickly the benefits will become manifest, for our economies and the moral fibre of our citizens.

‘That's good, very good, yes, yes,' the father rubs his hands together. ‘Our gold and uranium will surely convince them to sit up and take notice. Prime Minister B J will be game, that canny old bird. He knows what our security requires.'

She types a fair copy of the letter on the mother's tall old Blikman and Sartorius typewriter. She's never typed before but, by the end of the first couple of pages, her two index fingers begin to go like hammers. The pages are squared, folded, and slid into a crisp airmail envelope addressed to the Kremlin in the father's neat bookkeeping hand. He includes the envelope in a letter to his brother Jan in Holland. South Africa and the Soviet Union unfortunately do not have a postal agreement. The lack of the postal agreement, he writes to his brother in a covering note, is one of the obstacles to a relationship between the two countries that the letter to Mr Brezhnev is bound eventually to fix.

It takes three whole 37c airmail stamps to send the letter but the father doesn't complain about the cost.

On Tuesday morning Ella drops the overstuffed envelope into the postbox on the corner of Ridge Road on her way into school. She spends that evening before dinner sitting on her bed. For the first time in days her hands lie idle in her lap. Her mother is cooking their Tuesday meal, fried chicken livers and boiled potatoes. The father is reading his Churchill on the verandah. He hasn't yet checked whether the letter's been dispatched. She wonders when they'll write the companion letter to Mr Vorster. Might it be this weekend? He's said nothing about it. The carbon copies they have taken lie under the glass paperweight in the shape of a dockyard crane on his desk, his retirement gift from Lukes Lines.

She goes to set the table as usual. She senses the father suddenly turn in his chair to face her. Behind his head is the shimmering grey halo of the television screen. The map of southern Africa is sprinkled with flashpoints where over the weekend skirmishes with terrorists took place.

‘Look at her,' he says in his loud voice, ‘Gawping like some native. Or no, not like a native, a native's too good. Like a woman, a witless woman. Drinking it all in as if there wasn't a brain inside her miscast skull.'

What was that? Ella feels her mouth gaping open. She snaps it shut. Run, hide like the mother – almost she wants to. She grips the cutlery tightly in her hands.

‘Go on,' he says, ‘Finish the table. You think because you helped write a numbskull letter to the Soviets by way of passing the time you suddenly have special privileges to stand there dawdling and goggling? You know how it drives me mad when you goggle. You've no idea how stupid you look.'

With her sleeve Ella wipes his spit off her cheek, the smell of Old Brown Sherry.

‘Look at her,' he cries again, suddenly furious, ‘The worthless, disrespectful
loeder
. Don't I always say it? Never trust a person who goggles like that. How it contrasts with others we could mention, direct, loving people who looked one in the eye. Still do today. Wherever in the room you stand.'