‘Telling Stories’

My dad believed in stories. Stories were his liturgy, his creed, his affirmation of life. He believed that stories held in them the spirit of the ancients. He believed they wove threads around us that bound us together, that made us belong.

My mother believed that my father was soft in the head. Her world rotated on an axis of reason and logic. Anything that could not be substantiated by fact was simply dismissed. Fate and soul mates and intuition were the stuff of bad novels. So she stayed stuck forever on the precipice, the non-believer, looking out on my father’s world, a world both large enough to span universes and eons of time; and as small and fragile as rain drops caught in a spider’s web, too scared to ever take that tiny leap and ask ‘But what if?’

Her crippling inability to get past the rational made her the very worst reader of stories. One of my earliest memories was of her breaking off midway through the story of Noah’s Ark to inform me that there was obviously no way Noah could fit all the animals in the world on his boat.

‘So the rest of them drowned?’ I asked in a horrified whisper.

‘No, no,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘We’re not supposed to take it literally. We’re not supposed to believe it. The story is a metaphor.’ A few seconds passed as mother and daughter stared hopelessly at each other, so she added,  ‘It’s not really about a boat, or animals.’

‘What’s it about?’ I asked entirely baffled.

‘Sin,’ she replied, ‘and disobedience.’

That was, by mutual agreement, the last story she ever read.

So it was my dad who read to us at night, Beth and I tucked under an arm each, the three of us cocooned under the mosquito net that hung over my bed. My father’s voice rose and fell as he in turn brought to life Julian and Anne and George as they set foot on their island for the first time; or the cheeky Pippi Longstocking, which he insisted reading in Afrikaans, because it sounded funnier; the winsome Anne of Green Gables, or daring and sassy Nancy Drew.

But the best stories came out on our compulsory ‘family fun days’ – when by the time the sun was properly up, we’d already be half way up the steep pass that took us deep into the belly of the mountains. Under a crisp, blue sky we’d leave our dust-sprayed station wagon where the dirt road stopped and, armed with sandwiches and bottles of Oros and sun hats, we’d make for the caves a few hours away, zig-zagging up the narrow footpaths – my dad at the front, Beth, me and often Simon at the back. Just like a group San hunters setting off. As he marched ahead, waving his walking stick in front of him to ward off sleepy cobras, he conjured up his favourite characters of all, as real as though they were walking just in front of us. We became the hunters, our sights set on an Eland or even an elephant, vigilantly following even the faintest track until perhaps after a day or so we found fresh dung. And in our excitement we grew as quiet as breath, as invisible as a breeze, as light as dew, as we gained ground on the unsuspecting herd.

In the heat of the day we retreated, hot and thirsty and hungry to the cool of a rocky outcrop, a good vantage point on the valleys below. Whilst rusty-brown figures chased elephants with brandished arrows on the smooth rock-face behind us, we became the waiting women folk.

The hunting party had been gone a number of days by now. As we tucked into our cheese and tomato sandwiches, we scrunched up our eyes anxiously on the distant valleys for a scuffle or a dust cloud, for a sign that all was well.

Later on, retracing our steps on wary knees from a long day’s walk, we’d hear about the happy reunion, about the successful hunters returning home, bursting with stories of bravery and skill. We’d hold our breath as my dad recounted their final breathtaking moments of the chase and literally stop dead as the poisoned arrow pierced the heart of the unlucky Eland. Here my dad would pause, and we’d remind him that a hunter would always apologize to the fallen Eland, and pay homage to the great beast. And then with a smile, he’d launch into the dancing and feasting that followed a successful hunt and the ancient spirits who visited upon them in the deep of the night.

***

As if on cue, as if beckoned back from the spirit world, I turned away from the dark garden to see Beth. I blinked; my eyes had grown accustomed to the night. She was standing just behind me, gazing towards the ascending moon, barefoot and in her white nightie, illuminated from behind by the pool of light that shone out from the open door.

‘It’s a bushman moon,’ she said and smiled.

And then, scattering the mournful spirits, she yelled: ‘Dad! Dad! Come tell us a story. It’s a story-telling moon.’

My dad and mum appeared at the door.

‘But it’s late,’ murmured my mother. ‘Why are you both -?’

‘Nonsense,’ said my dad mildly, ‘it’s a perfect time for a story.’

We settled ourselves outside on the stoep on the wide cushioned riempie bench: my mum, Beth, me and my dad on the end, and for a moment even the cicadas and the frogs seemed to hush in anticipation.

‘Which one do you want?’ asked my dad, his low voice hummed in tune with the night.

‘The story of Leopold,’ said Beth firmly, ‘The story of how it all began.’

‘Really?’ asked my mum, ‘Do we really want that one again?’

‘Yes,’ replied Beth, ‘Begin!’

‘In the beginning,’ began my dad, ‘in the very beginning was darkness and a heartbeat, the heartbeat of infinite time. And in the midst of this, a young planet – moving, growing, breaking apart. Breathing in time to the ancient heartbeat, the heartbeat that will survive long after we’ve killed ourselves off. We’re all just visitors you know, like a plague of fleas on a dog’s back.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘moving on.’ We were in grave danger of being swallowed up by tectonic plates and continental shelves. ‘And then came the animals,’ I prompted.

‘And then came the animals,’ agreed my dad, ‘Of course that is just fascinating, the story of how the animals came to be, how life formed out of matter -’

No,’ said Beth firmly, ‘not tonight.’

‘A son would have been interested,’ he said forlornly.

‘Tough takkies,’ replied Beth.

‘Well then, if you’re happy to skip a few eons, then came the ‘early race’. Animals were people and people animals and they lived side by side and the animals knew as much as people and everyone knew to revere the ‘kaggen’, the mantis. Because he was clever and more powerful than any of the other animals. He was the supreme hunter -’

‘Ja, ja, we know about the kaggen,’ said Beth quickly, because my dad would happily slip into bushmen stories and forget about the Leopold story altogether.

He smiled at her and said, ‘OK – after the early race came the modern race, where people became more powerful than animals and people hunted animals. And then the white man discovered the tip of Africa, and brought about the age when people hunted people. So where are we now? 1803. Johannes Basson Leopold, and his wife Helena and seven children were recently arrived in the Cape, looking for a new life and fortune. But it was hard there in the Cape; it wasn’t anything like they’d been promised back in Holland. Everyone was talking about an empty Eden just waiting for them up north, beyond the Hex River mountains, beyond the endless rules of the small colony. So one day Johannes said to his wife, ‘‘Poplap, I’m sick to death of these bladdy Brits, with all their rules.’’’ My dad paused to allow us a giggle and shoot a glance at my mother. ‘‘‘Lets go north,’’ Johannes said to his anxious Helena, ‘‘We’ll keep going until we find a beautiful valley, lush and green and far away from the Cape.’’ So he hitched up his few wagons, loaded up his seven children and a handful of slaves and off they went.’

‘Do you think they started off in a big group? Along with many other families?’ asked Beth, who needed the story to be the same each time.

My dad scratched his chin. ‘I think they did. But our Leopold was a difficult fellow, an argumentative type.’ He leaned over patted my mother’s knee playfully. Beth laughed in delight.

‘So it wasn’t long before he broke away from the big group who were headed up north towards vast open plains and gold and diamonds. And instead Leopold turned his wagons and his few head of cattle east. And they got as far as this valley, just as far as here,’ my dad stamped his foot, ‘and stopped.’

After a pause I looked up into three expectant faces. What?’ I said.

‘Come on,’ prompted Beth.

I sighed and rolled my eyes, but then dutifully delivered what was historically my line: ‘But why? Why would they stop here? I mean, there’s nothing here.’

‘I don’t know,’ replied my father in all seriousness, ‘Maybe there was sickness in the family, or maybe Leopold looked at the mountains looming up ahead and realised they’d never make it across. But then again they’d come too far to turn back, so here they stayed.’ He stroked the back of my hair. ‘Or maybe Helena climbed down from her wagon one day and marched up to her husband and said: “Dammit, Johannes, my mother was right about you. I’ve had it with this wagon and I’ve had it with this endless search: just over the next hill, the next valley. So far and no further.” And that was that. So Leopold built a house, this house. And they must have sat here too, looking out on the heavy moon, listening to the night sounds, telling stories.’

And in a moment I could almost swear I heard the Leopold children just beyond the shadows.

‘A few hard years down the line more farmers trickled into the valley,’ continued my dad, ‘And of course the bladdy English with their rules caught up with them eventually. But they didn’t stay long.’ My dad winked at my mum.

‘Well, we’re back!’ said my mum, standing up ‘with our bloody rules. And now to bed. All of you.’

As she lifted my head with both hands to kiss me good night, the spell was broken and my body froze at her closeness to me.

‘Promise me you’ll not cause any more trouble,’ I said severely.

My mother’s lips were smiling as she kissed my cheek. ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘From now on I shall be as good as gold.’

***

I used to believe in my dad’s stories without question, until one day he told me that each one of us is born with a story. When I asked him to tell me my story, he refused outright; he said it was mine to live. But when I nagged him within an inch of his life, he said I had a nomad’s spirit, that deep inside I carried the song of the ancients, I was one of them. That was when I decided that perhaps my mum was right, perhaps really he was just a little bit soft in the head after all.