Embrace by Mark Behr Page A

over an ironing-board when the back has been broken so many times it doesn’t feel any more? Just shows: better to do everything myself than entrust it to others. If I ask anyone to do anything in this house I’m just making extra work for myself. There you have it, Katariena Maria De Man born Liebenberg. This is your life. This is your cross to bear.’
    I stood in silence. Ready to weep. ‘I can help you cut-knot-and-fold-in,’ I whispered.
    ‘Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’ll do everything myself from now on. Thank you for offering.’
    For two days she barely spoke to me, calling only when my food was ready, saying my name through stiff lips at night as she tucked mein after prayers. I waited for her to stop being angry; to talk to me and to love me again. Then, miraculously, with no explanation, the pot-handle was, somehow, forgotten and or forgiven. On a bright, starlit night, Bok awoke me from my sleep as I had asked as soon as their alarm clock went off. With the Afrikaans service of Radio South Africa from the wireless by our side, we went out onto the lawn where we sat wrapped in blankets with Suz by our feet. The night was not unlike any of hundreds we spent in the enormous silence of Umfolozi with Bok back from trail and just the sounds of the wild around us. But it was also different from any other; that night we were not looking at the flickering ecstacy of stars and the seemingly close-by haze of the distant Milky Way. Instead, our eyes were straining at the moon, checking whether we could perhaps see a black spot on its glowing surface. We couldn’t, of course, and I suspected Bok and Bokkie had known that much all along. But we heard Neil Armstrong, close to that exact instant he announced to the world: ‘Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The eagle has landed.’ And then, bored from watting for the man to walk on the moon, I fell asleep. I awoke from Bok saying my name and shaking my arm. Just in time to hear it: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’
    Bok hugged me and Bokkie to him and said: ‘We beat those Russians. I knew we would.’
    Zululand was wiped from the sand-pit. From Bokkie’s green lawn I stepped onto the smooth white sand of the moon — careful to evade the craters — as I practised my message to the world.
     
8
     
    Eyes, as if entranced, moved nowhere but from the face to the hands poised, fingers relaxed in front of his chest. The piano’s introduction neared its close and the fingers retracted, wrists drew closer to the chest, shoulders lifting and now the tension was inscribed in lines on the face, grooved pincers extending around the compressed lips. The eyes closed only to snap into a deliberate glare taking us all in as simultaneously the dark fringe bobbed on the forehead, the arms shot forward and up and in that same instant it seemed one hundred and twenty boys’ voices, in perfect unison, sang:
    ‘Ky-r-i-e’, over four bars, drawn to a slight diminuendo into which swelled Mike van der Bijlt’s second alto Ky-r-i-e, echoing ours; then, a tone higher and with increased volume, we repeated Ky-r-I-e; his finger flew towards Dominic bringing him in over the end of ours; eyes wide, a harsh whispered crescendo over the end of Dominic; we breathed and then, another full tone up, now in complete crescendo to his fists shaking we repeated K-Y-R-I-E, retracting the D sharp into diminuendo as he brought in Louw from second soprano behind us; closing his eyes, fingers into claws showed he wants crescendo on Louws first e-l-e-i-s-o-n, his hand flew at us quivering and we repeated, now pianissimo, after him. Then, the whole choir with the quartet:
     
    Kyrie eleson
    Christie eleison
    Kyrie eleison
     
    Louw repeating our penultimate Kyrie. Conradie from first alto was about to take it up, when: ‘Stop! In God’s fucking name stop!’ His eyes, still closed, the last words barked after the acoustics had melted and a familiar silence