Isak spits out the tasteless gum. “Mamma is waiting.”
The way his father touched the other woman was a way he touched nobody else, the way he smiled at her under his moustache was a smile of a man he didn’t know.
At the Datsun their mother stands in the shade smoking, thin streaks of black under her eyes, while Raatjie sits on the back seat chewing a plug of tobacco.
* * *
Someone switches on the light in the room. For a few seconds Isak readies himself for the earth to move again. His father leans against the doorpost, his thinning hair is in disarray and the buttons of his shirt are torn off. The room smells of the beer tent.
“Look, Sakkie. Look at what a drunk man looks like. Come to Pappa. Let Pappa show you.”
Unsteadily, he shuffles towards the bed and the boy. Holding himself up with a hand along the wall he yanks at Isak’s elbow, lifting him off the bed.
Then his father rests his whole weight on his shoulders, swivelling him around. “Walk with Pappa.”
Isak takes a step forward, buckling under the crushing weight.
“Call Danie, call Mamma’s favourite.”
Danie runs into the passage where their mother is crying. She holds Danie like a shield in front of her.
“Come.” His father takes small steps towards the bathroom. “Come inside, come, come.” Grandly his father sweeps a bow at the bathroom door. The man’s weight is unbearable for the boy.
The three of them file into the bathroom, cornered between the basin and the bath, their backs against the tiled wall. Their mother has stopped crying. Under the light her skin is covered in a web of fine red lines. The man begins to undress, slowly and clumsily, tipping back and forth, his body white and soft, with a scar running down the middle of his stomach to his navel. The scar droops tiredly from the slack skin and his legs are thinner than Isak can remember. He opens the taps. Brown water stutters into the bath, burning his hand.
“Shit.” The man pulls back, nursing the burn.
Isak studies the man’s face. He looks like Oupa, when Tannie Lettie nursed him. Tannie Lettie would bathe and dry him, then sit with him in a darkened room, feeling his pulse, while the fan blew over him.
With a splash his father slides into the bath, then sighs deeply, humming a love song.
The three of them watch him. Coquettishly, he peeps at the woman with the crumpled face. “Wife, what about a bedtime drink, just for you and me?”
Her eyes flash for a moment then drop with her voice. “You’ve had enough to drink, dammit.”
He pulls himself up, glaring at her, panting. “Woman, didn’t you hear me?”
She sweeps loose hair from her eyes, jutting out her chin. For a moment it looks as though she will defy him, then she walks out of the bathroom, down the passage to the drinks cabinet in the lounge. The two boys watch in fascination as their father sloshes from side to side, wiping himself with the soaped cloth, humming the same tune over and over.
She returns with two, neat brandies, one for him and one for her. The man in the bath tips his head back and downs it, while she sips at hers. The mirror steams up and their reflections disappear. Isak smears his hand across the glass to see better.
“Stop that!”
Without warning the tumbler smashes into the mirror, splintering it in all directions. No one moves. Isak looks down at his feet.
Glass glistens in his leg hairs.
* * *
Raatjie sweeps the bathroom floor and her lips are puffed and her breath carries the stench of spirits.
“Hurry up, the grootbaas is waiting.” His mother holds out a pair of two-tone shoes with fringes and studs on the soles.
Sullenly, Raatjie takes the shoes, lurching down the passage, hanging on to the broom like a walking stick.
“Boozer.” His mother pinches her cheeks. “Pig-headed and ignores everything I tell her to do.” With deft pats she applies the base, hiding the red veins. “Walking on thin ice, if you ask me.”
Isak waits for her to finish. “Mamma, Pappa wants his breakfast.”
“Tell your father to hold his horses.” She pouts, meticulously applying the lipstick, then smiles at herself.
In the kitchen his father is seated at the table. The forgotten posy stands on the windowsill. Isak tries to think of him naked but all he can picture is the scar on his belly. Raatjie tips the glass pieces into the bin.
“Mamma is coming.” Isak sits down opposite him. “She’s busy putting on her face.”
“Stiff-necked woman,” his father mutters. “Klimmeid, give me the eggs.”
Raatjie nods towards the porcelain hen on the dresser. There’s another canary in the cage but Danie doesn’t seem to care for it as much.
His father stands in front of the stove. “Where’s the pan?”
Raatjie nods to the cupboard as she fiddles in the soapy water. She drops a plate. It bounces before cracking in half. The studded shoes are wet. His father looks up from the pan, his one eyebrow raised, as Raatjie struggles to her knees.
“Leave it,” his father commands her. “Go home, before you destroy the whole house. Baas Kallie is ready for you to go the village, anyway.”
Cursing under her breath, Raatjie abandons the blue-rimmed plate and the shoes, struggling to undo her overall. “Fokken Minnaars,” she grouses.
His father smiles, slipping the perfectly made eggs onto his plate. “The klimmeid is lekker moody this morning,” he chuckles to himself.
Isak sits expectantly.
“Did you want?” His father is surprised. “Here take the pan, it’s still warm.” Then he hums the tune he likes so much, the tune from the beer tent.
“Where’s Ragel?” His mother’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail, the base over her cheeks blended into her hairline.
“I sent her home; you can’t do anything with her when she’s babalaas. The last of the crockery was off to the dump, the way she was this morning.”
“What about your shoes?” His mother has red nail polish on which hasn’t set yet, he can see by the way she blows over her hands. The red varnish hides the scarred nails.
“Nothing wrong with your hands, or what?” His father has noticed too, he dissects the eggs, the soft yolk dripping from the fork. “I’ll tell the men about the party myself, so there’s no need to phone and have the whole district informed.”
“Mamma, can I get eggs?” Isak interrupts them, feeling the tension mount, hoping to stop what he knows will come on a morning like this.
Distracted, she cracks eggs roughly, forgetting the varnish that smears against the eggshells, the white and yellow marbling in the pan in front of her. “The list isn’t yet final.”
“Decided and done.” He wipes neatly at the yellow on his moustache.
“Thanks, Mamma.”
She is not listening, scratching the scorched pieces into the bin.
* * *
Isak wolfs down the eggs and makes for the back door,