The Alphabet of Birds Read online

  When he scales the fence, more carefully this time, only Tommie’s bicycle is there in the dust. The explanation to his parents the next day is that he has given his bicycle away. He refuses to say to whom. Neither he nor Tommie ever says a word about it again.

  Another evening, a few months later. The last time, so he thinks, that he will ever see Tommie. Tommie and his mother will be moving out of the city the next day. When he asks where to, Tommie says they will be joining his father on the border, where he will help him fight terrorists. They are in Tommie’s empty bedroom, among packed boxes. Tommie is lying with his back against a box, shirtless as usual, hands behind his head. He is telling Christiaan about the weapons his father has ready for him. An entire arsenal. They will show the terrorists who’s boss. While Tommie is speaking, Christiaan reaches out without looking at him. He drags a finger through the hairs in Tommie’s armpit. Tommie is quiet for a moment, then continues. The weaponry is becoming heavier, increasingly lethal. Christiaan brings his face to where his finger has just been, breathing in Tommie’s scent. He stays like that for a moment, until Tommie gets up and pulls a wooden gun from a box. ‘My dad has an Uzi like this,’ he says, ‘but much bigger; a real one.’

  ‘I immediately recognised you,’ Tom says, ‘when we arrived here this evening.’

  ‘Our youth is a no-man’s-land,’ Chris says, and looks away. How impossible, he thinks, to return to it. All that remains is a void to be filled with the wonders of the world.

  For a while neither of them says anything. Tom takes his hand off Chris’s neck. ‘Your feet must be cold now,’ Tom says. ‘There’s soup inside.’

  He turns to the balcony door. It sticks when he pulls it, then yields. Dry leaves shift away like snow. Behind the shutters is a wall.

  ‘Bricked up,’ Chris comments. ‘Back along the ledge it is.’

  When he looks back to where he left his shoes by the tree, he is convinced he can see a face peeking around the corner. The Northern European from earlier, he thinks. Yes, he is sure it is him: the man with the impeded body and the disobedient bones. He points towards the face, but Tom can’t see anything.

  They have been gone longer than Chris thought. Most guests have left. After another half-hour only Tom and Chris remain. Fred observes them from where she is carrying away plates. She decides they have to stay over.

  ‘Too late,’ she says, ‘to order a taxi out here in the sticks.’

  She lends the two men fresh trousers and shirts – Fred’s for Chris and Tita’s for Tom. Not a word is spoken about the event around the piano earlier. There is no trace of the earlier tension.

  ‘Come and drink coffee here in our room!’ Fred is leaning her head over the banister and calling down to the men. She is carrying a tray with a silver coffee pot.

  Now Fred is sitting on the bed with her hands clasped around her shins, her face scrunched into a smile. Her neck is pulled into her shoulders and smoke is weaving slowly upwards from the joint between her fingers. A tiny coal drops onto the sheet and burns right through. The sweet smoke enters Chris’s nostrils and the hollows of his skull.

  Fred’s shirt is taut over Chris’s shoulders and the top button of his trousers won’t close. Tita’s shirt, on the other hand, is loose on Tom; his trousers seem quite roomy.

  Fred notices the burn on the sheet. She lifts the sheet before her, the hole over her eye.

  ‘What are you seeing through the ash?’ Chris wants to know.

  ‘The battered ones,’ she says, and sips some coffee. ‘The walking wounded left in the aftermath.’

  ‘The aftermath? Of what?’

  She does not answer. Tom smiles raunchily at Chris. An arm appears from behind the sheet and offers the joint. Chris takes a drag, then Tom, then Tita. Fred pulls the sheet around her face so that it tightens around her features. The hole moves over her mouth again. The joint is passed to her; she takes a drag. A trickle of smoke emerges from the black hole.

  Chris turns to Tita: ‘Tom wanted to know more about your research. Tell him about noise, about the hellishly noisy future.’

  Tom leans towards Chris and Tita. His borrowed shirt tightens over his shoulders.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that’s where it starts. The Futurists expected a deafeningly noisy future, and were preparing to welcome it. They, in fact, wanted to invite it, to storm and destroy the traditional concert hall – the so-called “hospital of anaemic sound”. Russolo armed himself with an arsenal of self-manufactured instruments. His Intonarumori – acoustic noise machines. Wooden boxes with a loudspeaker and a crank or electric button. With a turn of the crank or the press of a button one could make noise, and then modulate the tone with a lever.’

  ‘Explain how it all worked,’ Chris says.

  ‘Well, inside it has – or had – a wheel that caused a string made of cat intestine to vibrate. The lever adjusted the tension. Glissandi or individual notes would then be led to a drum adjoining the loudspeaker—’

  ‘Remind me of all the terrible sounds.’ It is Fred, appearing from behind the sheet. Her eyes are wide. It looks as if pure noise could escape from her head.

  ‘Well, there are six noise families, according to Russolo. First there are the roars, which include thunderings, explosions, hissing roars, bangs and booms. Then there are the whistling sounds, such as hisses and puffs. Following those are the whispers – murmurs, mumblings, mutterings and gurgling. The screeches, then, are the creaking sounds, the rustlings, buzzing, crackling and scraping. Further categories are the voices of animals and people: shouts, screams, shrieks, wails, hoots, heaving and sobs. Finally, there are the noises of percussion on, for example, metal, wood, skin, stone or clay.’

  How he likes Tita! Chris thinks. When she speaks, it is with real concentration. She is focused on her listener: rather than imparting something, she is tuning her ear to his frequency.

  ‘What’s the subtitle of what you’re writing?’ Tom asks Tita, but it is Chris he is looking in the eye.

  She looks down, as if wanting to divert attention from herself. ‘Something like “Noise, War and Loss”, but it’s provisional. Something more subtle will present itself. But it definitely needs to involve war,’ she says. ‘For the Futurists, war was the height of artistic expression.’

  ‘So, what I in fact intend to do is to trace the musical history of the twentieth century,’ she says, ‘searching for the moment’ – she draws a line on the sheet and presses with her finger at random points – ‘where all the major narratives, the big plans for the future, suddenly vanished like the morning mist.’

  Fred removes the sheet from her face.

  ‘The brave, cruel future … ’ Chris says.

  ‘And,’ Tita continues, ‘I then try to hear the echoes of that collapse, try to read it like tea leaves …’

  ‘Is it too simple to say that moment was one of the two wars?’ Chris asks.

  ‘All those men – the music people and the warmongers – with their manifestos and tracts, their declarations and objectives!’ Fred calls out.

  ‘Oh, but their bravery was precious too,’ says Tita. ‘What they could not predict was what would follow noise, the silence that comes after collapse.’

  Tom aims another wild smile in Chris’s direction, as if wanting to undercut the pompousness of the conversation.

  ‘We’re starting to get old, aren’t we?’ Fred says unexpectedly, looking at the cold coffee on the bedside table.

  She sits forward urgently, as if she has had an important thought. ‘Come and live here,’ she says, ‘both of you, here with us. There’s more room than anyone could ever need. Yes, and then we’ll make’ – she gestures excitedly to Chris, to Tom, to Tita, to herself – ‘a house full of children. Imagine the scene: cacophony from morning till the eve, summer breakfasts by the canal, soccer in the garden at dusk, chapped knees and grazed elbows … and an orchestra, yes, enough children for an entire little orchestra!’

  ‘I can see the orchestra before me now,�
� Tom pipes up drily. ‘The four of us, on our passeggiata in the shade, happening upon them where they have petrified in the dusk: in complete silence, frozen screams on innocent faces. Arms and instruments reaching towards the heavens. A statue representing the heroic masses …’

  His voice is unexpectedly dangerous. Both Tita and Fred look hurt for a moment. But then the lines of Tita’s face sharpen. ‘I have something to show you,’ she says. ‘Come!’ She jumps off the bed and beckons.

  They follow. Behind her, they climb the narrow wooden stairs that lead up from the bedroom.

  In the attic they have to bend their heads away from the slanted ceiling. Tita looks as if she is bent double. A naked bulb is swaying between them, their heads close together.

  ‘What follows now, a conversation with the dead?’ Tom wants to know.

  Tita ignores him. ‘It is generally accepted,’ she says, and her bone structure is casting sharp shadows, ‘that all Russolo’s Intonarumori were destroyed during the war. But … ’ She pauses for effect, then lifts a black sheet from the shape between them. The wooden box is dust-free, the megaphone of the loudspeaker smooth and shiny.

  ‘Don’t!’ she says, and lays her hand on Tom’s forearm when he immediately reaches for the crank. ‘It hasn’t worked for a long time; the internal mechanisms are immensely fragile.’

  ‘It is one of the smaller models,’ she continues, ‘but it is not the only one in existence, either. In the 1970s there was even a chamber orchestra that met in secret here in Milan to play on the handful of surviving Intonarumori. From all over performers assembled here, and at night, in abandoned warehouses, they would—’

  ‘Bedtime,’ Fred says suddenly, and blinks her little bushbaby eyes.

  Chris and Tom’s room is on one of the two unrestored middle floors, not on the canal side. The cast iron of the radiators is cool against Chris’s fingers. He tries to open the curtainless sash window, but it sticks. A security light shines into the room from the industrial yard. When they stand opposite each other, naked now, their penises are heavy in the stale air.

  Tom pins Christiaan against the mattress. As the air is forced from his lungs, he is flooded with joy. They travel across the bed in wrestling movements, taking turns to rise and push the other down. Their bodies, so Chris imagines it, are building fabulous towers. Slowly, Chris gains the upper hand. When his back arches above Tom’s like a cat’s, he can feel his spine exposing itself to the stars.

  Sleep washes over Chris in waves. He dreams of a blue sky that is divided into mosaic tiles. Then it becomes murky, as if a cataract were shifting over it. In the dream, he realises that he is looking through the eyes of the dead child in Tom’s story. In the canal, below the ice.

  He wakes up after midnight. He should ask Tom for a photo of the drowned child. He tosses and turns, thinking of the nocturnal performances on Intonarumori in the seventies. He would have liked to hear more from Tita about this. He feels a kinship with these underground performers. Nostalgia is paralysing his muscles, as if he had been there too. His yearning for these people with their noise machines in unfamiliar industrial spaces causes his sex to stir like a snail against Tom’s back.

  Tom wakes up. His limbs move towards Chris as if through water. Initially he resists Tom. He relaxes and they accelerate: they become two smooth, pure objects, severed from their youth, from all ties and expectations; behind them, only the black heavens.

  Later they wake up again. Chris thinks he can hear something: perhaps the water level in the canal is rising, perhaps the machine in the attic has started working.

  ‘Who are you?’ Tom asks in the dark.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Chris asks.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Hmm, not sure what you want to know.’ He considers an answer. One revelation would be as arbitrary as another. A man looking for his bicycle?

  ‘I live in London. Academic. Art history, early modernist architecture and sculpture. Not a very fashionable field.’ How cerebral, Chris thinks, even in this sleep-drenched moment.

  ‘More,’ Tom demands.

  Chris can smell Tom, and there is something familiar and incendiary in the smell. ‘If you must know, I’m working on an article called “Boccioni, Futurism and the aesthetic of Afrikaner Nationalism”, Umberto Boccioni being a sculptor who worked early last century, of course.’ Perhaps, Chris thinks, he should not have said ‘of course’.

  Tom doesn’t say anything, just becomes more fragrant.

  Chris breathes deeply and says: ‘Yes, isn’t it strange where ex-South Africans pop up these days and which subjects and worlds they join together?’

  He still has difficulty gauging the right topics and level when talking to Tom. His last remarks, he suspects, make him sound like someone from the past, a messenger from a world gone by. He is disappointing Tom. He tries one more time: ‘For Boccioni,’ Chris says, and turns to face Tom, ‘the rhythm of an industrial valve opening and closing was as beautiful as that of a living eyelid.’

  ‘All this history … ’ Tom says. ‘I’m more comfortable with what’s right in front of me.’ His tongue is unexpectedly in Tom’s left armpit. For a third time they intertwine, more tenderly this time.

  Chris wakes early. Everyone is asleep. Only a slight glow betrays the coming dawn. Tom is lying with his hands behind his head, his armpits dark. Their borrowed clothes are piled up in a corner. Chris tiptoes to the bathroom across the hallway. He is unsure whether there is water here, but, when he opens the bath tap, it rushes out against the marble. It does not become warm, though. He waits until it is knee-deep and then stands in the cold water. On his legs and ribs he notices bruises. Like the stains in the marble, he thinks, as he immerses his body. His joints feel scratchy. He holds his breath, trying to slow his heartbeat.

  It is hard to say how long he lies like this before the door opens. He sits up halfway, suddenly aware of his nakedness, even though the women hardly register it. His teeth are chattering.

  ‘The noise machine,’ Fred says, ‘the Intonarumore! Tom has taken it. He must have crept through our room and simply carried it out of here!’ She throws a hand in the air.

  He is now sitting completely upright. ‘It is hard to explain,’ he says, and he is talking through lips that are numb, ‘but … Tom ultimately gives more than he takes.’

  The unhappiness does not vanish from Fred’s face.

  ‘It takes a long time to discover what it is that is being given,’ Chris continues – and he realises that even he would take some time to figure out his meaning – ‘to discover what the gains are that are yielded by losses … perhaps one never finds out—’

  Tita starts smiling slowly. Something approaching joy is breaking through.

  ‘It isn’t a loss – we simply have to get it back,’ Fred says vehemently.

  But Chris’s attention is with Tita. What he is reading in her expression is the beginning of understanding. All routes are left open, all uncertainties are held in equilibrium. An embracing graciousness is emanating from her. Everything that is irreconcilable, may, for now, be joined together. She can wait for as long as it takes for the connections to reveal themselves.

  When they pull the door shut behind them, he takes out the plug. As the water runs out, his weight sinks into the marble. The cold enters his bones. Above the taps little blue tiles stretch to the ceiling. In the marble he can sense the vibrations of lorry engines.

  If he has to interpret the ache in his bones honestly, it is a longing for Tom to return, and to bring with him a vanished world. He wants to fetch Tom himself, wherever he may be. But when you are frozen, you’re unable to move; you can only wait to be found. And if it cannot be Tom, let it be the children who discover him – the little gang, huddling to gape at his open blue mouth. But there’s a far greater chance that he will be lying here until spring arrives, until the ice gently releases him, and lets him drift down to the sea.

  ‌Van

  Sandrien is the only white woman in B
ella Gardens. She is in fact the only white person in town. An establishment for the accommodation of women travellers, reads the website of Bella Gardens. The most luxurious home for females, reads the brochure in the dim entrance hall. One could mistake it for a refuge for unwed mothers.

  Her hostess is Mrs Edith Nyathi, who introduces herself as a widow and retired matron of Frere Hospital. She never stops talking about her ‘second life’. She raises her eyebrows and drops her head forward when pronouncing the phrase. The guest house is her pension, she says, ‘my little egg’. The number of maids in her employ permits her to relax with a cigarette on the veranda during the day; sometimes, late in the evening, with a cigar. Mrs Nyathi does not raise her voice to any of the maids – a phalanx of demure village girls, ready to fry up sizzling English breakfasts or to polish baths and wooden floors to a high gloss. When she calls to one of her girls, it is in the same cooing voice she uses to address her guests.

  The colonial veranda of the sandstone house offers a view over the village. Except for the college buildings at the top of the slope, the guest house is the grandest building in Vloedspruit. Corrugated-iron shacks hug the slope. Dotted between them are Basotho-style rondavels with thatched roofs. Lower down, where it is colder and where the watery waste collects, there are rows of government houses built of cement bricks, some with rickety lean-tos. Others have clay-plastered rondavels in the backyards. A village of pondokke, kaias and strooise, Sandrien thinks, but these are words from a different time.

  In the mornings Sandrien walks up the hill to the training college of the provincial health department. She is attending a refresher course, lasting six weeks, to prepare rural nurses for ‘the major challenges in primary health care today’. Our Health Revolution is the title of their newly printed textbook; it has laughing faces of different races on the cover. The classes begin at nine. At eleven, tea and sandwiches are served; at one there is a two-hour lunch break. In between, they fit in sessions about everything from vaccinations to smears to the physiological effects of different classes of antiretrovirals.