Back to School
It is the middle of January. And it is hot. The air is still. The air is filled with the electricity of cicadas. He called them Christmas beetles when he was young. Hot. The middle of January. He hears the two young boys playing next door in their swimming pool. The last day of the school holidays. He hears the two young boys screaming and splashing. Hears them calling out to each other: Watch me! Watch me! Watch me! The day before the boys go back to school. Back to School adverts on television. Back to School specials at the supermarkets and discount stores. Specials on stationery and grey socks and boys’ shorts and black shoes, girls’ grey skirts and short-sleeved white shirts, exercise books and coloured khoki pens and crayons with all the colours including gold and silver and flesh. He remembers being the same age as the boys splashing next door in their pool. He remembers that his parents could only afford to buy the pack of six crayons – that did not have silver or gold or flesh. He remembers what the last day of the Christmas holidays felt like. His family did not have a pool. They stayed at home for the holidays. They celebrated Christmas with his father’s side of the family. At Cedara. Or at Lion’s River. Dargle. His father’s side of the family did not have swimming pools either. They were Afrikaans. They had pellet guns and katties and gravel roads leading up to their houses and front stoeps and back stoeps and stoeps that went around three sides of their houses and gum trees and long grass and chickens that cackled in a hok at the back and crazy dogs that had to be locked up when anyone came to visit. He remembers that if he and his younger brother wanted to swim when they were at home then they had to go across the road to the Dewar’s. The Dewars had a round plastic pool that stood behind their house. The pool was not sunk into the ground, so he and his brother had to climb up a metal ladder in order to get into it. The Dewars had no dogs and they had no young children, but he never felt welcome going to swim there. It always felt to him as if he and his brother made too much noise or splashed too much water over the side of the plastic pool. And there was ittle fun to be had in paddling slowly around with his mouth closed. Now he hears the two young boys screaming and splashing next door. It is the last day of the boys’ school holidays. Tomorrow they will wake up early. Tomorrow their mother will drive them off to school and drop them outside the school gate. He remembers that he and his brother got a lift to school with the girl who was the most unpopular girl in his class. She wore glasses. And her ankles were fat. Her parents owned a fish and chip shop. And they were always late in picking him up. He was always late for school. Even on the first day of the new school year.
Fourteen Things No Longer There
His father’s blue Ford Escort that was always clean and neat
His grandmother who died of liver failure, although she had never drunk a
drop of alcohol in her life
The old plum tree that he fell out of as a child and broke his wrist
The naked white body of his sister seen through the keyhole of the bathroom
door
The plastic purple helmet that he always wore as a child when he rode his
tricycle
The red Tri-Ang tricycle that he rode up and down the driveway all day in his
purple plastic helmet
The swing with the wooden seat and the two long clanking chains
The hard and scuffed ground underneath the swing where his feet dragged
The big wooden drum used for winding cables, which his father had brought
home from the factory for them to use as a garden table
His mother’s swollen body in the hospital bed, which was odd because she
had never been to hospital, except to have her three children
His father’s father, whom he called Oupa, who lived with them, and who
always wore khaki, except on Sundays when he put on his dark three-
piece suit to go to the NG Kerk in Boom Street
The thin blue book of questions and answers about sex that sat on the shelf in
the back room next to his father’s Gedenkboek van die Ossewatrek: 1838-1938
His thin wrist pale and dirty after the cast had been cut away
The sound of the blue Ford Escort idling outside the gate at five o’ clock in the
afternoon, as his father waited for him to come and open the gate.
He does not have a smart card to open his hotel room door.
He does not have a silver key or a plastic stick to open his hotel room door.
He just bangs on the door with his fist
and immediately the young Russian girl on the bed opens up for him.
He cannot understand his hands. They are just two loose things at the ends of his arms. He flaps them. They are heavy. He bites them. And they are hard. They taste of salt and oil and dishwashing liquid. When he presses them against his nose he smells all the big and the small things that filled them over the years. Things that fell through. And smashed. He wonders what would happen if he were to take an axe and chop them off. Would they flap their short wings and disappear into the sky? Like a parrot escaping from its cage. Would they bury themselves instantly into the ground like moles? It occurs to him that apart from separating them violently from his body, there is only one other way to find out. He must cover his arms in dark red sealing wax and set fire to their blunt ends. Then wait until they run.
Hold Just Like That
(i)
In the first portrait his pants are down. He is wearing a pair of old Y-front underpants and a white vest. The crotch of his old underpants is stained yellow. This is the one view, a view taken directly from the front, and full size. There is also a second view. A view from the side. Again his pants are down, bunched around his ankles. He is wearing the same pair of old underpants and the same white vest. This time, however, the camera is looking up at him from an angle, and his thin white legs and his sagging and hunched stance are obvious. There is still another view, the last one in the collection. For this final shot the camera has moved behind him. His old underpants have a bright red stain in the middle of the seat. His back is slightly hairy. But this time he is not alone in the photograph. He seems to be holding something in his right hand. It is difficult for the viewer to make it out because his arm is so close to his body. It seems to be a belt. Perhaps the belt from his trousers that are bunched around his ankles. And the viewer is left with the question: what is the man going to do with the belt?
(ii)
In this portrait the camera is looking at him from the front. His legs from the knees down and his shoulders and head have been cropped. He is completely naked. It seems that he is sucking his breath in because his stomach is flat, but not muscular. His pubic hair is thick. His uncircumcised penis hangs down toward the left. In the next image the viewer is shown a close-up of his penis. His scrotum is hairy. There is a rubber band around his penis. It is wrapped twice around the base of his penis. His penis is partially erect. The veins are standing out on the shaft of his penis, particularly the prominent dorsal vein. His penis is purple. It is clear to the viewer that the man’s penis is running out of oxygen.
(iii)
The final portrait of him is in the bath taken from above. In this shot he is turned at right angles to the bath with his legs hanging over the side. The bath is empty, and he is dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt. His trousers and his underpants, however, are lying on the tiled floor beside the bath. There is a thin stream of liquid running from beneath his body to the drain. This liquid is luminous yellow. Perhaps it is urine. In the next view the camera is concentrating on the man’s eyes alone. There is nothing else in the image. His pupils are brown. His eyebrows are bushy and turn upward at their ends. It is hard for the viewer to gauge anything about his expression from the scant evidence provided. The eyes, it seems, are not a window to the soul. Or to anything else. They are in fact opaque.
He sleeps like a pillow
The rain in his shoes
His eyes watching another sky.
*
He waits
Waits for the page to close
Rain dripping softly off the trees.
Map of Home
Unfolded. Spread out in front of him.
Impossible to close.
In the photograph, her right knee is raised
and folded
Her costume is black
Two thin arms hold out the sun
from her eyes
There is a mountain on one side of her
A river on the other
She stops waving, in the photograph, and puts down
her white hands
She puts them into the river
The mountain has a name; and the name is written
on her back
He turns the photograph over
Only to find out that she is blank.
Hold just like that.
List of Shots (II)
Close-up. (Version 1: Tracking.)
#i.
Subtitled: The start.
At the base of the spine.
Snake-like. No other description.
After 40 years
it is still sensitive to touch.
#ii.
Right leg, below the knee,
vertical, 10 cms with
6 cross-stitches. To keep him
on the straight and narrow.
#iii.
Right foot, outside ankle,
crescent-moon, approximately 12 cms,
faded stitches, impossible to count.
In order to stop him
going over.
#iv.
Subtitled: The practice.
Right wrist, circular, jagged,
4 cms with no stitches.
Windows are actually meant
for looking through.
#v.
Left foot, outside ankle,
crescent-moon, approximately 12 cms,
with 8 cross-stitches.
Because this one was going
the same way as the other.
#vi.
Same foot, top of ankle,
vertical, 10 cms with
6 cross-stitches. Because
he had to be pulled back
with force.
#vii.
Same again, inside ankle,
1.5 cms, no stitches. Just
a nick from an electric saw with
rotating blade used to remove
old plaster cast.
#viii.
Subtitled: The scare.
Back of the neck, from
just below the shoulders to
the top of the spine, straight
as a ruler, 15 cms with 10 cross-stitches.
In order to insert a silicone shunt.
In order to prevent him losing
the rest of his feelings.
#ix.
Right hand, palm and
fingers, calluses
and corns, various,
#x.
due largely
to walking
#xi.
on uneven air.
#xii.
Everything else
comes and goes.
Fade.
Sitting
With his eyes closed & his hands folded in his lap
on a plastic chair at a wake for his friend stabbed to death by an off-duty policeman.
With his eyes open & his arms hanging by his side
on a small wooden bench made by his grandfather from a World War 2 packing crate.
With his eyes squinting & his hands on top of his head
on a five hundred million-year-old block of black dolerite in a landscape of sand and stone.
With his eyes unseeing & his hands between his legs
on a patch of cold sand in the early morning while the mist hangs over the waves like a gauze dressing.
With his eyes staring wide & his hands folded across his chest
on the low lime-washed wall of a shaded stoep in a small Karoo town.
With his eyes looking into the distance & his hands upon his knees
on a log in the late afternoon when the memory of her long white legs suddenly returned.
With his eyes behind dark glasses & his hands twitching inside his pockets
on the cardboard box of books from his study in the house he no longer calls home.
With his eyes pinched tight & his balled fingers digging deep into his palms
on a green plastic sheet across a high metal table while the surgeon with big hands removed his cast with large steel pliers and an electric saw with rotating blade.
Standing
Also with his eyes closed.
But with his hands raised in front of him. Like a mantis.
S: All lined up in a row.
During assembly in.
The hall with his eyes.
Closed murmuring the.
Lord’s Prayer losing his.
Balance swaying like the.
Mast in the film Moon-.
Fleet about smugglers in.
Sailing ships during a.
Storm while he is afraid.
To open his eyes because.
It is the Lord’s Prayer and.
He feels he is going to.
Fall and the headmaster is.
Watching and maybe but.
He is not sure he did fall.
Over once into the row in.
Front and he was taken to.
The sick bay as usual where.
He hid the whole day.
Because maybe the next.
Day everyone will have.
Forgotten so he clenched.
Every muscle and nerve.
In his body to stop himself.
Snapping like a mast.
An award-winning poet and playwright, educator and editor, Kobus Moolman teaches creative writing in the Department of English at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is regarded as one of South Africa’s leading lyric poets. He has published seven collections of poetry: Time like Stone (winner of the 2001 Ingrid Jonker Prize), Feet of the Sky, Separating the Seas, (winner of the 2010 South African Literary Award for Poetry), Anatomy (winner of the 2009 DALRO Prize), Light and After, Left Over, and his most recent, A Book of Rooms. He has also published two collections of his award-winning plays, Blind Voices (2007) and Full Circle (2007). He was the editor of the literary journal, Fidelities, from 1995 until 2007. In 2010 he edited and published, Tilling the Hard Soil: Poetry, Prose and Art by South African Writers with Disabilities. In 2013, he was the Mellon Writer in Residence, courtesy of Rhodes University in Grahamstown. At the end of 2013 he was awarded the Sol Plaatje European Union poetry award.