The old age home totters from side to side. The walls buckle under the invisible streams and in the confusion they cling to each other, for there is no other to cling to.
The top storey collapses, flattening the ground floor.
Isak awakes as the christening mug of Ouma and Oupa flies off the shelf and breaks. He feels the world moving beneath him and he is frightened.
Above him his father reaches out to pick him up but the damaged hand is too weak.
“Leave me, Pappa, I can walk.”
He feels for the hairpin in his pocket as he follows his father.
Outside his mother is holding Danie and the whole world is turning and in flames. He looks into the sky where the moon is orange and perfectly still. The Southern Cross lies upside down, caught in the branches of the deltoidia.
FIVE
The earth is wet with rain. Below the hills in the valley, thousands of men and women pinch blossoms between their fingers and the blossoms fall to the ground, spreading out underfoot. Raatjie walks ahead, while Isak carries the box of tins, filled with water. They tramp over veld, desecrated by drought and the fires.
They pass a deserted porcupine hole. Quills litter the area around the opening.
“There’s nothing left, everything is dead.” He stands on a flat bush that disintegrates into powder. He thinks of Tannie Lettie at Ouma and Oupa’s funeral, sobbing next to the open grave.
Raatjie nips a berry off a small scraggly plant. “Taste.” Her scarf is pushed back, revealing greying hair at the temples.
The berry is sweet and sour on his tongue.
“Come and have a look.” She pulls firmly at a gnarled plant, opening it up for him to see a delicate orchid hidden in the depths of the bush. The petals are fine and wispy like the legs of an insect.
“What’s that?”
“Spinnekop.” She plucks off the stem just above the surface, placing it in one of the tins. “Fine as spider legs. It doesn’t just grow everywhere, only some special places where the wind blows and blows the sand into the bush, then it takes years and years before the seed will sprout and become this pretty thing.”
“Why the bush?”
“Ag, this old vaalbossie protects it from the bad weather. It’s nice and safe inside there.”
“I want to take it for Ouma, Mamma I mean,” he corrects himself. It is hard to think that her soft skin is no more, the flesh of her arms like kneaded dough now shrivelled away under the ground forever.
She shakes her head, pulling at other bushes. “Rather not, it won’t work, this is its place, finish and klaar, take it away and it’s gone.”
She passes a second orchid to Isak. He has not seen such a pretty flower in the veld before.
“I’m going to come and pick, after the show.”
She shrugs, resting her hands on her lower back, legs wide apart. “In a day or two they’ll vrek from the sun, you’ll have to wait for next year.”
Isak sits down on a stone. He scratches with his nail at the grey-green moss.
“I thought the fire killed everything.”
She rolls her lips knowingly. “Fire does no harm to the seed, the seed needs the fire to live.” She walks off a little way, picking here and there until she has a posy. “Katstert, pypies, viooltjies, oumakappies, take it.”
The flowering heads are fragile and their scent is pleasing to him. “Thanks.”
“Put in water when you get to the house,” she instructs him, her attention back to finding more of the orchids.
He will give the flowers to Magdaleen. Perhaps after the big boys have climbed off the bus, perhaps at the showgrounds. He turns the flowers around in his hand. There were posies at the funeral of Ouma and Oupa. Flowers were thrown on the coffins, lots and lots of them. The two coffins lay next to each other, covered with flowers, roses with the French name that Ouma loved so much. Roses flown down from the north.
Tannie Lettie had to be lead away by the man with the grey shoes who drove the hearse.
“Is Raatjie’s Koos happy?” He draws patterns with his big toe in the ash.
She stops, frowning, “A ma can’t read a child’s heart.” Her mouth pulls straight like a post box.
“Koos doesn’t like me.”
“Koos is like his outa, he wants no one to be his baas.” She glares at him fiercely, with her new eye.
“Pappa needs someone to drive the lorry to the co-op.”
“Koos wants his own lorry.”
“Volk can’t own a lorry.” Isak laughs at the ridiculous idea.
“Raatjie is finished talking.” She shoves the flowers into the tins. “Enough of this, the nooi can come and do her own work if she wants more.”
He picks up porcupine quills as they walk down towards the house. There are cracks in the plaster. Some of the windowpanes have been replaced with shatterproof glass.
* * *
A stack of old newspapers lies on the kitchen table. While Raatjie stuffs the newspaper between the tins, Isak stares at the familiar front-page photos of collapsed houses. There is also one of the old age home, flattened like a pancake. Oupa always wanted to be on the ground floor, for safety and for his legs. Oupa made a mistake.
“Now then, pass on.” Raatjie holds out her hand.
Isak crumples the photo. “Is Koos busy with nonsense?”
“Your right is my wrong.” She takes the tin out of the box with the posy. “These are going down the road, if Raatjie must guess a good guess.”
“Is not!”
His mother comes down the passage on her stilettos.
Raatjie drops her voice, “Is! This oumeid isn’t blind.”
“Ragel.” His mother stands at the door, her thin ankles wobbling on the pointed heels. “Put the flowers in the boot and remember to pack in my gloves.”
“Ja, Nooi.” Her one eye drops to the ground while the other keeps on looking up.
“Sakkie, are you and Danie coming along? I hear the Flemish horses are showing this afternoon.”
He nods. “Yes, Mamma.”
“Danie is playing somewhere in the orchards with David. Tell him to hurry up. I’ll get you at the gate.”
He takes the shortcut through the pear orchard, thinking of the black man who makes trouble and that the man has kind eyes. All around the old trees are gone but there are new trees in their place, planted closer and narrower so that the trees can begin to bear quicker.
David is irrigating the rows. The spade in his hand moves smoothly and rhythmically.
“Hello, David.”
“Good afternoon, Kleinbaas.” David tips his hat. The spade is worn through like the teeth of an old ewe.
“Where’s Danie?”
David smiles, pointing further down the row. “Playing in the furrow with the others, Kleinbaas.”
Water floods around the base of the trees, filling the trenches dug by David. Isak splashes his way up to where Danie and the barracks children are playing. They quieten at the sight of him.
“Mamma