The Promise

by Damon Galgut

By tomorrow already this will have changed, the body will be long gone and its permanent absence covered over with plans, arrangements, reminiscences and time. Yes, already. The disappearance begins immediately and in a certain sense never ends.

But in the meantime there is the body, the horrible meaty fact of it, the thing that reminds everyone, even people who didn’t care for the dead woman, and there are always a few of those, that one day they shall lie there too, just like her, emptied out of everything, merely a form, unable even to look at itself. And the mind recoils from its absence, cannot think of itself not thinking, the coldest of voids.

If Rachel keeps such things. Kept. The mental correction is satisfying, like a stiff joint clicking into place. Rachel will always be in the past tense now.

They forgot I was there, in the corner. They didn’t

So the only people who were with Rachel Swart when her time came were her husband, aka Pa or Manie, and the black girl, what’s her name again, Salome, who obviously doesn’t count.

But you didn’t do it, you did not kill your mother. Somebody else’s mother you killed. And therefore mine must die.

You get the idea. She touches down where her spirit was once thick, but she’s no longer solid, a watercolour woman.

Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It’s just the living part we still have to work out.

But Anton can see once more inside his sister, cold and clear as the clapper of a bell, that it’s her own death she’s feeling. If it can happen to our father, it can happen to me. This nothing, this state of Not. She mourns herself in terror.

One thing conjures up another. All events joined somehow, at least in memory.

There’s no official burial site for farm labourers, who are not attached to the land, not really, they are transient, even the ones who’ve lived here many years. In the end, they all blow away.

Who belongs here now? The answer is no longer clear. Among the various people who’ve stayed over, there’s now a general sense of restiveness, an itchy need to move on. A spirit of agitation flickers in the corners of the house. All the rituals are completed, why are we still here?

You understand, he says, people don’t always take what you give them. Not every chance is an opportunity. Sometimes a chance is just a waste of time.

He is hungry, always and perpetually hungry, and not always for food.

Time passes differently for those who’re shut out of the world. It travels past like traffic at certain points in the day, or like a particular shadow inching across the ground, or like your own body, signalling its cravings to you. It seems to slide by slowly, but the days flicker fast and soon your face is different, not quite yours any more. Or perhaps it is more like you than ever before, that is also possible.

What bothers him so much? All he can say, eventually, is that it feels as if they’re on opposite sides. Opposite sides of what? That’s the question. A divide, a chasm, a widening gap. But what that division is, and where it lies, that is another matter.

She stopped enjoying them a while ago, after a couple of years working at the hospital. The real world has become too huge, too heavy, to be carried around in a basket.

The problem, she thinks, the problem is that I have never learned to live properly. Things have always been too little or too much, the world sits heavily on me. But, she reminds herself, I am getting better at it! She’s found it in herself lately, more and more often, to do what she feels she has to, but to do it lightly.

Worse, both of them know that their lives are about to change irrevocably and there’s nothing they can do about it, taken from one existence to a different one completely, just at the midpoint of their teenage years and at their zestiest hormonal peak, pumping out oil and hair and desire. How terribly unfair everything is! Goodbye!

Foolish old earth, returning and repeating itself, over and over. Never misses a show. How can you bear it, you ancient tart, giving the identical performance again and again, evenings and matinees, while the theatre crumbles around you, the lines in the script unchanging, to say nothing of the make-up, the costumes, the extravagant gestures . . . Tomorrow and tomorrow and the day after that . . .

The last of my tenderness, saved up for people I don’t know, who don’t know me. No love left, only kindness, which is maybe stronger.

Though I’ve loved a few in my time, when I was able. Who, Amor? Some men, some women, along the way. What does it matter, bodies, names, I am alone now. Hard enough to keep loving yourself.

Indeed, it seems plain by now that nobody cared hugely for Anton or knew him well, and even the people close to him were far away.

Because, my friends, there are other lifetimes beyond this one, and other bodies waiting to receive our spirits. We will meet Anton Swart again, each one of us who was connected to him. He’ll have another name, and so will you, but your spirit will know his, and all the unfinished business between you.

Easy to confide in Amor, she’s so quiet and attentive, and when she does speak she uses just the right words. Ja, that’s it, she knows what to ask and she knows how to listen.

Remember the rituals you had to perform every night in your mind as a kid, the objects you had to mentally touch, before you were allowed to close your eyes. So anxious you were, much better these days.

Both women know they won’t see each other again. But why does it matter? They’re close, but not close. Joined but not joined. One of the strange, simple fusions that hold this country together. Sometimes only barely.

And afterwards, when Pa carried you down into the house, everyone came running, Ma and Astrid and Anton, there was tumult and you were loved, they closed over you like a flower. Now all of them are dead and only you are left.

The rain has no prejudice. It falls without judgement on both the living and the dead and continues to fall like that, for hours through the night.

Not old yet, but not young any more either. Midway somewhere. The body past its best, starting to creak and fail. Remember when it was at its fullest, though you didn’t know it then. The first day you bled, the day they buried Ma. And now maybe the bleeding is over. Last period was three months ago, might be no more. You’re drying slowly in your channels, running out of sap. You’re a branch that’s losing its leaves and one day you’ll break off.

starts to climb down the roof, step by step, towards whatever it is that happens next.