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  Teacher wasn’t married when he arrived in Transkei. Unlike most African men who came to South Africa, he didn’t have a wife or small children squirelled away in his home country, conveniently out of sight. Anyway, he was too absorbed by his teaching to have much time for women and that made the girls in Standard Ten even more determined to sleep with him. Teacher’s classes became a polite sort of scrum where the girls pretended not to understand the most basic formulae so Teacher would come over to their desks and help them. They even failed their tests deliberately so they would have to stay behind for detention. But soon there were so many girls in detention it was impossible for any of them to have a private moment with Teacher. So they abandoned that ruse and, much to Teacher’s delight, the average class mark went up again.

  But unlike the other girls, Precious was genuinely atrocious at maths. It puzzled her that she should struggle so much with the subject when she tried so hard to be good at it. There were many at Mathanzima High School who equated light skin with ignorance and, conscious of this, Precious worked twice as hard to prove them wrong. She often envied Thembeka, her younger sister. With her dark skin, Thembeka took after uTata’s side of the family, and did not have to deal with the litany of bias and innuendo levelled at Precious. But despite all her frantic studying, it was not long before Precious was routinely the only one in detention.

  Teacher listened carefully to Precious Mtakwenda’s shaky and hesitant logic and did his best to nudge her gently back to reason. He wrote out sums on the blackboard and explained the steps to her with such care that she marvelled at his patience while feeling ashamed by her inability to grasp the concepts. Teacher even wrote to a white school in Bloemfontein and asked them for a copy of their Standard Ten maths textbook in the hope that Precious might understand that better than the scant resources they had at Mathanzima High School. It was clear that getting Precious to understand differential equations and algebra was a personal challenge for Teacher. Sometimes he grew frustrated with her and spoke to her sharply but that only made the right answers flee in disarray from her head.

  Precious tried pretending that she understood and nodded her head in what she hoped were all the right places, but of course Teacher caught her out. Her deception grieved him much more than her inability to do her sums. They were both exhausted by then and in time began talking about other things – mostly about him. Precious was curious to know about Teacher’s parents and what it had been like growing up in Ghana. But Teacher could be very shy and Precious had to coax the stories out of him. In those moments their roles oddly reversed, with Precious as the patient instructor, and Teacher the reticent pupil.

  Precious’s family had been opposed to the marriage from the beginning. She did not understand why. After all, wasn’t Teacher highly respected? Didn’t he have a good job? When she asked uTata why this was, he’d stood up abruptly from his chair and went outside, muttering something about her taking the family backwards.

  ‘We all know Teacher is a good man,’ her mother had said at last. ‘And I am very fond of him.’ She took her daughter’s hands in hers and held them tight. ‘But he is so dark.’ She spoke in a whisper as if she did not want to be overheard. ‘Think of the problems you and he will face. The disadvantages.’

  ‘What disadvantages?’ Precious had asked.

  But her mother had just sighed and said nothing more.

  Following her restless night, Precious got to the kitchen and found Ma’ama already there. Her wax prints were as elegant as ever and a string of hand-painted beads hung from her neck. A look passed between Precious and Karabo. Ma’ama seemed to wear a different outfit every day.

  At breakfast Precious did her best to play the part of the good wife. She looked down at her plate and said as little as possible, but both Ma’ama and she knew it was only an act.

  ‘I hope you slept well?’ Precious asked.

  Ma’ama looked at her daughter-in-law with a mixture of regret and scorn. ‘How could I sleep? I was disturbed by some noises.’

  The five of them were huddled around the small table, co-conspirators around a pot of porridge. Teacher and Paa Kofi kept their eyes averted. Only Karabo spoke up.

  ‘What noises, Ma? I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘There were no noises,’ Precious said quickly. ‘Your grandmother must be mistaken.’

  A small smile tugged at Paa Kofi’s lips.

  ‘At least we were not cold,’ he said.

  Winter had not yet arrived but it had already sent its messengers to warn of its coming. Precious had had to light the cast-iron stove a month early because of Teacher’s parents. They were not used to the cold at all. They wrapped themselves up so tightly when they went outside it was as if Mthatha were caught in the depths of an Arctic blizzard. Teacher rarely helped to clean the stove but he was very proud to have it in the house. There was something about the way it banished the cold so completely that gave him a deep sense of achievement. It was as if in some small way he had wrestled against the elements and won.

  Ma’ama didn’t allow Paa Kofi to serve himself. She fussed over him as if they had just met and she still needed to impress him. She filled his bowl to the brim with porridge but took hardly any for herself. When Precious followed her lead and served Teacher in the same way, he glanced up at her in surprise.

  ‘Ma’ama,’ Precious said when she had sat down again, ‘is there something wrong?’

  Ma’ama’s spoon was suspended in the air and she was turning it slowly in front of her nose.

  ‘Hmm.’ She sniffed in a way that left no doubt as to her meaning. ‘Hmm.’

  Precious grimaced behind her serviette. That would be another black mark against her name. She’d been in such a hurry this morning that she’d forgotten to lay out a matching set of cutlery for her mother-in-law. Ma’ama took mismatched cutlery as a sign of moral deficiency.

  She knew Ma’ama blamed her for keeping Teacher in Mthatha. If it wasn’t for Precious, Teacher could have done much better for himself. He could be in Johannesburg or Cape Town, teaching in a proper school with black children who spoke like white children and with good food in the canteen.

  He’d applied once for a teaching position in a school in Bloemfontein, the same one he’d written to some years before asking for a mathematics textbook for Precious. She’d thought him crazy to think he could get a job in Bloemfontein of all places, even if he did have a relationship of sorts with Gerhard, one of the teachers over there. But Teacher insisted he stood as good a chance as anybody else. After all and with the 1994 elections behind them, weren’t all the white establishments at pains to demonstrate that they were on the right side of history?

  When three weeks later the letter arrived in the post, Teacher was left disappointed and angry. He called Gerhard for an explanation, only to be told they’d given the job to a Coloured man. Teacher remembered the man well. He’d met him in the waiting room and, as job applicants do, the two had struck up a conversation. It surprised Teacher that for a man who professed to be a mathematics teacher, this applicant had no idea who the great mathematicians, such as Descartes, Pascal and Nash, were. Teacher could have forgiven that. They were there to interview for a teaching job in mathematics, not history. But when he discovered the Coloured man didn’t even know what a Fibonacci number was, Teacher had been quietly confident he would get the job.

  ‘We were looking for a teacher the students could relate to,’ Gerhard said over the phone. ‘I hope you understand, Mr Bentil.’

  ‘You mean I’m too black,’ Teacher said, while Precious kneaded the knots in his neck. And Gerhard promptly hung up.

  Secretly, Precious had been pleased for she had no desire to leave Mthatha. If she were honest, the thought frightened her a little. She still remembered what uTata had said to her the first day she’d seen Teacher all those years ago. Teacher wasn’t from here, he’d said. But she was.

  CHAPTER 3

  André Potgieter kept mostly to the modest house he sh
ared with his mother in a quiet residential suburb of Mthatha. It had a lush green lawn in the front and piles of building rubble at the back. Even though the Potgieters had arrived in Mthatha two years ago, they still only offered the briefest of greetings to the other white people they met in the street or in the shops before hurrying away. André would have preferred things to remain that way, for he was reclusive by nature and was happiest when he played the violin. But his mother, Marietjie, was adamant that he had to do something to earn an income. And so, reluctantly, André began to give lessons.

  ‘Come now,’ his mother said one morning, rapping her knuckles sharply on the kitchen table to rouse André from his apathy. He had hardly touched his breakfast. ‘You have Mrs Harrison today.’

  André pushed his chair back from the table. The strips of toast lay undisturbed on his plate in the same regimented order as his mother had cut them.

  ‘I don’t know why the woman bothers with lessons,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible for anyone to learn the violin properly at her age.’

  Marietjie interrupted him with a raised finger. ‘Mrs Harrison pays us good money. Or would you rather we went back to Bloemfontein?’

  ‘Money isn’t everything, Ma.’

  His mother sighed theatrically and folded the dishcloth in her hand. She placed it on the table in a neat square and patted it once before she spoke. ‘The only people who can afford to say that money isn’t everything are people who have money already. People like Mrs Harrison.’

  ‘Claire.’

  ‘Mrs Harrison,’ his mother repeated, emphasising the title. ‘So what if she is as tone deaf as your pa?’

  At the mention of his father André felt the rush of blood in his head and for a moment his face contorted into a leer. ‘You know that’s not why I play,’ he said, conscious of the hint of petulance that crept into his voice. ‘I teach only because I don’t want to go back to Bloemfontein. But I don’t want to stay here either. If I do, I’ll go mad. Like that black woman in the next valley.’

  Quickly, Marietjie made the sign of the cross. ‘Where will you go then?’

  ‘I don’t know. To London maybe. They’ve got very good music schools over there.’

  On hearing this his mother’s pale skin lost the little colour it had.

  ‘To London?’

  André shrugged as if to indicate he was not particularly fixed on England but the set of his jaw must have given him away.

  ‘You surprise me, André,’ his mother said in an unnaturally loud voice. ‘I thought we’d talked about this already. You know what the English are like. Your pa …’

  ‘Stop it, Ma! Just stop it!’

  André looked down at his feet, embarrassed by his sudden outburst. His feet were large and splayed out on either side and looked out of place compared to his mother’s trim proportions. He rubbed his hand over the fuzz of hair that grew down the sides of his face and over his chin. ‘I’m not fighting the Anglo-Boer War with you, Ma,’ he said. ‘Not anymore. That’s just ridiculous.’

  Marietjie’s lips tightened. ‘Ridiculous, André? Is it really?’

  ‘Yes, it is, Ma. You hate Pa because he was …. because he is, English. Do you know how pathetic that sounds?’

  André looked up at his mother with anguish. Her eyes were dark and wary.

  ‘You’ve seen them again, haven’t you?’ she said quietly.

  André shook his head. ‘Not for a while.’

  Marietjie came around the table and hugged him. Her hair fell about his face in a dark veil.

  ‘I’ll call Doctor Viljoen,’ she said. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  André pushed her away as gently as he could so as not to offend her. Her body was as light as that of a small child.

  ‘Please don’t, Ma. I’m not sick.’

  ‘I know,’ she said hurriedly. ‘You’re different, that’s all.’

  André rose quickly to his feet, towering over her. He thrust his chin forward and made his way to the door.

  ‘I’m sure you know that if this were England in the Middle Ages, they’d have tied me to a stake and burned me,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘André!’ his mother cried. ‘You’re not to say horrible things like that!’

  He stopped and gave her a long look. ‘It’s true, Ma,’ he said. ‘They’d probably have burned you as well. The mother of the witch must be a witch herself. There’s a certain logic to that, don’t you think?’

  Marietjie’s voice grew shrill with hysteria. ‘We can stay here, André! I know it’s not the best but at least nobody bothers us.’

  ‘But they will bother us one day, Ma. You know they will.’

  ‘And you think London will be any different? You’ve never been out of South Africa and now you want to leave me? And go to England of all places! You just said they burn people over there!’

  ‘That was hundreds of years ago. They don’t burn people anymore.’

  ‘Go then!’ she cried. ‘Just get out of my house and go!’

  Brusquely, she began to clear the breakfast table. She placed the dishes in the sink with a loud clatter and attacked them with a wet sponge. She muttered to herself as she washed up, a quick-fire stream of murmured complaint. When she was done she wiped her hands with the dishcloth and hung it on a cupboard handle to dry. She did not see André come back into the kitchen. He stood and watched his mother quietly, running a hand over his head and his neck where his hair was too long for a place like Mthatha. When Marietjie eventually turned around, she let out a small shriek. She had not expected him to still be there.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a low voice. His long arms hung loosely, clumsily, by his sides and his slightly pudgy middle sagged towards his feet. He felt awkward – he always felt awkward, even in his own home. Marietjie smiled at him and a web of fine wrinkles appeared at the corner of each eye. ‘You’ll be late for Mrs Harrison,’ she told him. ‘She may be English but that’s no reason to keep her waiting.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Mrs Harrison was indeed waiting when André arrived. She was a weather-beaten woman with large breasts that flopped tiredly beneath a loose cotton blouse. Her hair, in contrast, was pulled up in a tight ponytail that accentuated the feline slant of her eyes.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said as she opened the door.

  Claire and Bill Harrison lived in a large rambling house that was bereft of any particular style. Over the years they had added several extensions to the house and each new building project had little in keeping with what was there before. Now the house was an illogical sprawl of thatched roofs and glass skylights in between stranded patches of light and shade.

  Mrs Harrison insisted on having her lessons on the patio which looked out onto the garden and the fields of corn that stretched away in the distance. The acoustics out on the patio were very poor but not so poor as to trouble a student with as little talent as she.

  ‘I’ll add on the extra minutes at the end,’ André said. He did not apologise and no apology was expected. He knew Mrs Harrison as a coarse, good-natured woman who forgot a rebuke as quickly as it was uttered.

  André took his violin out of its case and busied himself with it for several minutes.

  ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ Mrs Harrison said with a sigh.

  ‘The thought has crossed my mind,’ André replied without turning to look at her.

  He unfolded the music stand and clipped a photocopied page of sheet music to it. It was a beginner’s piece and not too difficult. It was marginally more advanced than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which they’d practised the week before.

  ‘Bill’s out all day today,’ Mrs Harrison said with good-natured irritation. ‘God knows where he goes.’ She cast a flabby arm in the direction of the fields. ‘It’s not as though the farm can’t take care of itself. I mean, the rain falls and the bloody crops grow. How much supervision does that need? But he’s off every day at the crack of dawn and doesn’t come back until nightfall.’

&
nbsp; Her voice grated on André. Despite the years since she’d emigrated, Mrs Harrison’s accent was still more British than South African, more Manchester than Mthatha.

  ‘Farming’s difficult, Mrs Harrison,’ André murmured. ‘I should know. I grew up on a farm.’

  They had this discussion before every lesson and André had learned to let his student ramble.

  ‘That’s right. In Bloem, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Terrible place Bloemfontein. Full of Dutchmen.’ Then she clapped a thick hand over her mouth. It was a game she played, a jolly attempt to provoke her music teacher. ‘I think I’ve put my foot in it again.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Harrison. I don’t live in Bloemfontein anymore.’

  ‘It’s Claire. Only the bank manager calls me Mrs Harrison.’

  ‘Very well. Claire.’

  ‘You’ve never told me why you swapped Bloem for this godforsaken place.’ She jerked her head in the general direction of the city centre. ‘Don’t get me wrong, André, I’m glad I found you. I was going mad in stages with nothing to do. Nothing meaningful anyway.’

  ‘So that’s why you decided on violin lessons.’

  Mrs Harrison nodded eagerly. ‘I simply had to learn something new. Bill doesn’t understand. He thinks I’m post-menopausal. Men can be such fools. I’ve been post-menopausal for years, not that he’d know the difference.’

  André didn’t offer any comment and she carried on.

  ‘Other than yourself, André, I don’t think there’s a decent violinist within a radius of fifty miles.’

  André replied with a ready smile. ‘And soon there’ll be two of us. Shall we begin?’