“The old man farms outside the village. He noticed your red neck and forearms as signs of your mutual calling.” Danie keeps his eyes on the screen while talking. “You gave us one bloody hell of a fright,” he repeats, unaware of his expletive, fingering Isak’s wrist for his pulse.
The mask covers his mouth so he doesn’t have to say anything.
All he wants to do is close his eyes and escape everything and everybody.
“The old man farms with pigs.” Danie prattles, fiddling with the needle in his dead arm. “Do you remember Dad’s Landrace?” Danie’s voice is anxious as he rinses his hands in the basin next to the cot. “Isak?” His voice rises like that of a boy long ago. “The old man has an album, entirely of pig photos here with him in the hospital.”
The swinging cross sparkles over him.
Landrace, Isak thinks, it could be my name too.
* * *
The pigs are in cement pens. The men look at the miserable creatures, spitting in the dust.
“Aikona, Baas must look again, that creature has more head fat than anything else.”
The sprig of heather in Outa Floors’s hatband wilts and his nails curve over his fingertips. But his father ignores them. The pig is caught, a nervous creature, unused to being alone, whisking its ears and peering suspiciously with small eyes. Outa scatters mielies at its snout and the pig’s head drops greedily.
They play, Isak, Danie and Pettie amongst the pens, running and jumping along the cement wall when his father kneels with the point-22. They freeze obediently like statues on cue. Pettie’s wiry body contorted over Danie’s softness.
The gun on his father shoulder lies level with the pig’s backbone. It lifts its head. His father shoots and the bullet pierces the pig between the eyes and they carry on playing.
The pig is the weight of a full-grown man and they must help Outa and Piet lift the carcass onto the wooden door. Danie flinches while Isak keeps vigil over the dead animal. His father swats the dust off his knee, placing the rifle on the wall, picking up the guitar, humming under his moustache while Outa sharpens the knife on the wetted stone. The pig stares at Isak with surprise. He closes the lids. With one cut Outa slices through the neck. The hind legs kick. The blood drains into the basin and the dogs lick the cement. The guitar rests on his father’s knee while he smokes and sings and strums.
Sewe snye brood. That is what he plays. Outa shuffles to the music around the makeshift table and there are red flecks on his shirt. Piet pours boiling water from the soap pot over the carcass while Outa scrapes the hair off and Pettie sweeps.
Sewe snye brood, becomes, Die kat val innie modderwater. Isak taps with his foot as his father knocks the side of the guitar with his hand.
They’ve had their morning dop, Outa and Piet. Liquor on empty stomachs is something they share with his father. The men open like Namaqua daisies. His father smiles and he looks happy here in the yard with the men singing and Isak hopes the singing won’t stop.
One after the other Outa and Piet abandon the carcass and they do a dance like mating storks, dipping and diving around each other.
Without warning his father places the guitar back on the wall. He picks up the rifle. “Enough of this nonsense.”
Piet drops his arms and moves back to the rigid carcass. “Ja, Baas.”
They watch him walk up the hill and Outa rolls a cigarette. “Janneman got up off the wrong side of the bed.” He spits on the cement.
He and Danie say nothing.
The two men share the cigarette, then Outa takes the knife, splitting the ribcage in two. The first to come out is the bladder. Pettie presses the urine out, passing it on to Danie to blow up, while the men remove the innards and the boys kick the bladder around.
The intestines are placed onto one side, bloodied and full of feed. The carcass is stripped of its hide and hung from a hook to be dried in the wind. The gelatinous membrane swaddles the pink flesh and Isak can’t think that it was a pig before.
The head is kept to one side. The head belongs to Outa.
The intestines are hosed, inside and out, and the fetid mess spills out at their feet. They throw long pieces into the ashes under the soap pot, waiting for the stinking membranes to blacken. Danie gets the end bit of the gut because he is the youngest. With quick hands they turn the pieces over, sitting on their haunches. Deftly, Pettie hooks the blistered intestines, claiming the first for himself because he is the eldest. They stuff their mouths with the burnt offal until there is nothing left.
The stench stays on their hands until evening. Even after violent scrubbing with soap and water it lingers on their skin.
TWO
The gun stands at the back door, alongside a row of his father’s shoes.
A meerkat of a Raatjie sits polishing in the shade of the stoep, listening to Jim Reeves on the radio. The laces are washed and pegged in pairs on the line.
“Sies, you monkeys stink.” She pulls up her nose, waving them back, her dark eyes picking on them. “Ga! Get rid of the filth. Outside not inside!”
“Where’s Pa?” Isak asks her, stroking the barrel of the gun.
Raatjie nods impatiently towards the mountain behind the house. “The baas is stewing up there.” Frowning with concentration, she attacks the leather with a brush.
“And Kalbas?” Isak asks again as they wash their hands in the cement sink.
“All the dogs went along.’’
They hold out their hands for her inspection. “Just look at the two of you, your ma is going not only beat you up but me too.” She pushes the oversized spectacles back on her nose. “Off!”
Obediently, the two boys strip and hand her the bundle of clothes. Isak looks up at the mountain behind the leaves of the deltoidia. The brush swishes vigorously back and forth. She speaks in passing as the naked boys wrestle in the sun, “Raatjie’s bread is waiting.”
They whoop and make a dash for the back door, jostling with each other to be first. On the kitchen table is bread smeared with apricot jam. The canary watches them, chewing on its seeded stick. Danie feeds it a crumb and the little bird twists its head between the bars to peck at it.
Suddenly the radio’s volume is turned down.
His mother stands at the door, dressed in an overall, her dark hair swept up on the sides of her face, like the Spanish doll in Ouma’s cabinet, and the sinews of her neck are strained as she walks past them to the window. “Bedonnerdgeid,” is all she says before lighting a cigarette. She purses her lips and the smoke comes out in an even stream. “Have the volk finished with the slaughtering?”
“Ja, Mamma.” They answer in unison.
“Boeta, tell Outa he must send the head up to the house.” She struggles with the overall’s buttons, staring at him. “For God’s sake just put some clothes on first.”
“Ja, Mamma.”
He grabs at the pile of dirty clothes next to the radio. Raatjie swats wildly at him with the brush but he is too fast, hopping and pulling on his shorts as he runs down the hill to Outa.
The men are hosing down the cement and the door. They wear gumboots and are laughing loudly as Outa sprays the water and Piet sweeps.
“Outa Floors, Mamma wants the pig’s head.”
They stop laughing. The head lies on a tray of Ouma’s with a net over it. The net is covered in flies.
Piet protests. “It belongs to Outa.”
Isak shrugs. “It’s Mamma’s.”
Outa’s