Magic realism: Charl-Pierre Naudé’s The Equality of Shadows deals with a bizarrely disappearing and reappearing Northern Cape ghost town similar to Putsonderwater (above). (Getty Images)
Mid-May 1973.
A few Saturdays later at my house, from where I also ran the editorial part of Die Weekpos (The Weekly Post), around 11 o’clock in the morning I heard Anna’s side of the story.
She would drop in and have tea with me about two or three times a year, usually when she came to town to buy necessities. Her little visits were vital for me, but of this she could have had not the slightest inkling. I suspect they were just a way for her to pass the time while she waited for her lift back to the farm. For me the meagre hour was too short to get across the limitlessness of my love.
Broad bands of light flooded in through the big bow windows of the two front rooms that flanked the enclosed veranda, which I called the stoep room. The windows were tall and slim, statuesque, you could say, like brides of glass. I rented the house from the municipality.
The stoep was screened off with wire-mesh, and that’s where Anna and I made ourselves comfortable in a pool of wintry light. My house was on a rise and caught some lovely sun.
She told me that the gossip story had left her speechless, that she wanted nothing to do with such an incident, and I must please, please believe her. She had on a pair of beige slacks and a white shirt with a collar, unusually demure for her. In the light of events, she probably wanted to emphasise her vestal side.
She was very upset. About the indecent photographs of her in the policeman’s possession. And about the fact that she and Dirkie were prohibited one another’s company, this after a meeting that took place between the four parents and the police chief following the incident. In the name of advancing public morals, one presumes. But she was even more upset about something else.
Author of The Equality of Shadows, Charl-Pierre Naudé
She couldn’t understand it, she said. Everything that happened in the church between her and Dirkie, exactly like the koster (churchwarden) and the policemen said they witnessed it, was dreamed by her in her bed. And more or less at the same time.
This she realised after the sneering Kleinschmidt sketched the church incident to her in his office, because hadn’t “the prick” called her in for a private chat while her parents waited in the charge office.
Kleinschmidt also gave his story unnecessary colour. By which she meant, I think, he made reference to her blushing nudity in the photos.
“I could not believe my ears,” she said. “In my dream Dirkie and I were on a train station, then in the church again, and for no particular reason in the veld also. Ag, you know how things are in dreams, Mister Verdomp, one tends to move around a bit. But the whole time we were in one another’s arms. I am mad about Dirkie. I dream about him constantly and I know he dreams about me.”
“You cannot go over-imagining things now.”
“Oh yes, I can. And, one more thing. In my dreams Dirkie is not slow at all. He is wonderful!”
“But why did you take off your clothes?” I could hear the hurt in my voice.
“I don’t know, it was only a dream.”
Anna was a strongminded woman but her eyes began to water. “I don’t know!” she repeated vehemently. “I was just dreaming.”
“Just…! And what’s more, in the church…?”
“The church was Dirkie’s idea. It got chilly, so we went inside.”
“Dirkie’s idea?”
“His idea in my dream…”
I had to wonder if Anna had any idea about my dreams about her. Then she stuck her hand into her slacks pocket and plucked out one of the photos Oom Kossie had taken.
She put the snap on the coffee table in front of us. Stolen from Kleinschmidt’s desk […], she informed me. In the foreground was Anna, looking into the camera with big eyes, and in the background, also in the pew, the slightly hazier figure of Dirkie Verwey. He is looking straight ahead of him with a poker face. Her arms are around his neck, and she is glancing over her shoulder at the camera. Her bared breasts are partly visible from the side. Something like a halo surrounds their heads, like one gets in photos that are slightly out of focus.
I looked at Anna there next to me, then at the snapshot, and back at Anna. The strangest awareness of my life was sinking in […].
“Anna,” I said. “This is not you. It looks like you, yes. But it’s not, honestly. Look!”
Upon which she burst into tears.
“Precisely! It’s Kleinschmidt’s doings, the pig! They made a photo of me in which I’m not …”
“This is also not Dirkie,” I told her. “The hair looks too soft, and look, it’s wavy. Dirkie has a crewcut. And he’s too shy to show up on photos. I myself once snapped him right from the front and later found nothing in the frame.”
Anna nodded. She screwed up her eyes to stop herself from crying.
“You’re right, Mister Verdomp …” she said. Her voice went soft, I could almost not hear it.
In a way my heart was happy it was not her in the photo. But there was the other possibility. And that was a punch to my solar plexus. I remember my extreme surprise at the realisation, even now, after many years.
My words were: “I think the truth is more complex than Kleinschmidt’s doings, Annie.”
“It’s terribly complex, Mister Verdomp,” she agreed, spluttering through her tears, draping herself around me in her despondency. With her arms around my neck like that, I hoped she didn’t notice the hunch in my shoulders too much.
“Hermanus,” she said. “There is something else I must tell you.”
The Equality of Shadows is published by Picador Africa