Into The Hyacinth – Mandisi Nkomo

Piet looked at the empty email he was attempting to type. He got up and busied himself with fixing things that didn’t need to be fixed. He changed old light bulbs that were still working. He went outside and started all four of his cars. He ran them individually for five minutes each. He opened the bonnets, checked the oil and water. He went into the garden and pulled out some weeds. Then he cleaned the pool pump filter. There were no leaves in the filter, but he flicked it out all the same. He took the creepy crawly out of the pool. Took each segment apart to check there was nothing stuck inside. There was nothing stuck inside. Then he had a Castle Lager beer.

He put the rugby on, watched ten minutes, then went back to the computer.

“Marelize,” he typed to his estranged daughter. “As you know your mother is dead, but you don’t actually know how. We tried to keep it quiet but I need to tell you the truth. She drowned herself.”

With the first grueling sentence out, he went back to watch the rugby.

~~

“So ja Marelize,” Piet continued the email. “She drowned herself. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. She became troubled over these last few years. I tried not to bother you with it too much. It was maybe after Trump got elected. I’m not too sure. She seemed very upset by that, amongst other things. I wasn’t too bothered about it. He just seemed like a straight shooter to me. 

“Anyway, she got heavily into the wegraping after that, but in a very blasphemous way. Almost a doomsayer. She became convinced the end of the world was coming. At the same time she also started to obsess with the water hyacinth. It’s a plant.  She said the hyacinth mother was talking to her from Hartbeespoort Dam. Calling to her to become one, and that was the only way humans could survive the coming apocalypse. The dominee was very upset about her new beliefs, especially after she stopped attending church regularly.

“Since you left the dam has become full of hyacinth. They can’t get rid of it. It just comes back. They have many experts from Rhodes University and stuff to explain how it’s difficult to get rid of it. Too many seeds in the dam over the years. Stuff like that. The plant is apparently from the Amazon as I’ve read. It was spread during colonialism, they say, but I’m not really into that stuff of blaming everything on racism and colonialism. It’s lazy. People must take responsibility for themselves and situations.

“So ja. Your mother said she’s turning into hyacinth. That’s when it started getting worse. I will be a man and admit I did ignore some of it when I shouldn’t have. It was difficult to follow. I’m old school, you know? I don’t really understand these kinds of mental things and problems. “You know, like when you started talking about that word, ‘queer’, en al daai moerse acronyms, and identity, and whatnot.  I don’t really understand that stuff. These mental things. I just figured I’d pray for you.”

Piet stopped typing as the exhaustion set in. His arms felt heavy and his shoulders burned with the weight of it. It was late at night, and load shedding was coming. Usually he wouldn’t be awake for the 3AM slot, but after Marykie’s death, he couldn’t really sleep.

~~

Another week passed in a matter of minutes. Time had lost shape. Piet felt fatigued with what he’d written, but he was so burdened by the truth. The truth he hadn’t told his daughter. She was already estranged after all, so why burden her with the madness he had witnessed?

 He went down to the kitchen and poured himself a klippies and coke. Perhaps the Klipdrift brandy would help him sleep, he’d told himself, on many a night. He sat down in the empty and now increasingly hollow living room. It felt like the walls were constantly closing in, and the silence was blaring at him in a non-stop high frequency of white noise. He turned on the rugby. Bulls vs Sharks. Had he watched this match already? Did it matter?

Another week passed this time it seemed like in a matter of seconds. His mates we’re covering for him at the car dealership. Piet had taken time off, but the time just seemed to extend and extend with no end, and he was always tired, and the energy he sought to get back to work seemed to be running away from him, constantly just a couple of steps ahead. He could never catch up.

He needed to get it out. He needed to tell Marelize. He mustered up the will to put some more words together.

~~

“So ja, you know. I’m fine and stuff. Not too bad. Don’t worry. You don’t need to worry about me. I understand I frustrate you. Or what was that word you laaities use? Trigger? Triggers …

 “You don’t need to come back. I’m fine. You said you had your reasons for leaving the country. It’s OK. I can understand wanting to live without constant crime and power cuts. It’s only human.

“But as I was trying to explain. Your mother. It wasn’t so simple how she died. Suicide is a very bad thing. I hope you know that. It’s a sin. The dominee was very disappointed. We decided not to tell anyone outside the family. Not that you’re outside the family, but, ag, you know what I mean. It was embarrassing so we didn’t want others to know. I mean, your mother was a role model at the church. We couldn’t let down the kids like that.

“Anyway, where was I? She would say her skin is turning green and that when she looks in the mirror, her eyes are purple flowers. Her hair is flowers.  She kept saying she has a head flowers.

“It was at church where we first saw her harm herself. I didn’t even know she had a knife on her. The dominee was giving his sermon and out of nowhere she just gets up and walks to the podium. Everyone was very confused. She then began taking her clothes off. All of her clothes I mean. We were all frozen in shock. Some people were screaming. She cut her forearms open, and told everyone to look at her green blood. Then she began frantically preaching about the wegraping, that Donald Trump’s election was the sign of the end of times. Soon a plague would come, and the earth would no longer sustain us, and we had to become one with the hyacinth if we wished to remain alive. She was frantic, waving her hands and spraying blood all over until she toppled over unconscious.

“It happened again a week or so later. Luckily not at the church. That would have been too embarrassing to happen again.  Your mother said she wanted to become fertiliser. I laughed first, then she kept going on about how hyacinth can be reused for fertiliser, so if we all become one with the hyacinth mother, we’ll survive the end of times by being reabsorbed by the earth. It was a pretty mal thing to hear.

  “That’s what the experts were saying. People would come with a bakkie and take the hyacinth in bits. One day your mother ran out and yelled at the workers to take her away from me. She said I was a horrible husband, I’d ruined you with my antics, and I didn’t believe she was a hyacinth. They laughed awkwardly to keep the peace, until she lifted her floral summer dress and cut out a slice of her thigh. This time it was with scissors.

“She held up the slice to show them it was green like a plant. Some of them jumped and began to move away. Eventually I got her under control. This was the second time we went to the doctor after she’d self-harmed. The doctor asked a lot of questions and recommended a psychiatrist. I thought ag, but that’s not how you solve problems. But then another day I found her in the bathroom; she had shaved her head. She said she was pruning the flowers. She put tufts of it in vases around the house. She would force me to stare at the beautiful purple colour for hours. I just saw hair, but I tried my best. Well, worse than that, she started cutting her scalp. She would put pieces in the vases as well.

“Eventually we saw someone, and she said your mother had a severe case of schizophrenia. The suggestion was to institutionalize her until they could stabilize her. Fok dit. No one was going to institutionalize my Marykie. I told them to fokof. At the time I was sure I could manage it.

 “You know I just keep it simple. Go to work and back. Go to church. Watch the rugby. This latest Boks team is doing very well. Very well. Rugby is so important you know? I don’t like it when they say there’s racism in rugby. There’s no racism in rugby. It’s a sport, you know? You don’t get politics in sport. Can you imagine sports presenters storming off a show because they think there’s racism? Very unprofessional. I doubt that kind of stuff happens in the UK. They’re probably more sophisticated there. But that’s South Africa for you. People always pulling the race card. I guess that’s also why you left, maybe. “

The electricity cut just as Piet finished the sentence. Again, distracted and tired he’d forgotten to check the load shedding schedule. He just sat there in the dark, which had become increasingly comfortable to him. He wondered if the email had been saved. He sort of hoped it hadn’t. It was taking him longer to finish than he thought it would. Marelize was just a child, how could he be struggling to write to her? He knew not to call. He knew she didn’t like that. How could he have forgotten to get petrol for the generator?

The other generators buzzed in the darkness. He wondered if Marelize and Marykie had still been speaking. Even before she started wondering off at odd times in the night to stand by the water, he thought he heard Marykie having whispered conversations at night.

~~

The electricity only returned the next afternoon. Eventually he’d dozed off to some rugby he’d saved on his phone. He woke up to make coffee, as according to the schedule he should have had power.  He even got so far as putting water and his favourite ground coffee blend in the machine. Still half asleep, he pressed the power button over and over waiting for the red light that never came. His ears switched on, and he heard the ominous generator hum from the other houses. He rolled his eyes, and pressed a light switch to be sure, as there was always a pitiable hope that maybe the power was on, even when one knew it wasn’t. Afterward he flicked through the angry neighbourhood WhatsApp group messages, learning that Eskom had to fix this or that, and didn’t know when power would return. He swore, went upstairs and splashed his face before getting into the bakkie and driving to Mugg & Bean for breakfast. They had a generator and internet at least. 

 After having coffee and an omelette, Piet left Mugg & Bean and drove over to the Engen garage to get some petrol. Once at home he rigged up the generator, and just as he did, the power came back. He went to the computer and somewhat disappointingly the email had been saved. He had to continue.

Sat at his computer, he felt his bad knee. Still tender after all these years. The injury that had ruined his rugby career in university. It was bullshit. The knee hadn’t slowed him down at all. He had performed in that match the way he’d always performed. It was like his Pa had said. “That kaffir got on the team because of affirmative action.” Piet didn’t like the word kaffir. That was the old ways. But he understood what his Pa meant. The blacks ruling the country were just about hiring their family members. Even in places that shouldn’t be political like sports, they had to bring race in for no reason. That much was true.

The knee reminded him of the night Marykie took him to the dam to see the hyacinth mother. The cold made his knee tingle, and it tingled a lot that night as it was poes cold.

“So, ja. Your mother made me go to the dam with her one night. It was very cold that night. Again, I was confused but I let her convince me to go down to the dam anyway. We walked down in silence with a flashlight showing the way. It was eerily quiet and there were almost no animals out which was quite strange. We reached the water and your mother became very very excited.

“‘Do you see her?’ She kept screaming. ‘Look at her majesty!’

“I could see nothing but dark, and the moon’s reflection in the calm water, but your mother went on.

“‘Look at that beautiful blue colour! It’s so lovely! Oh, she’s calling me to the water.’

“At that point she charged at the water. She went right in. Clothes and alles. I had to run in and drag her out myself. She was hysterical, and only when we got back to the house could I calm her down. That water was so cold my knee was singing in pain.”

The power went out, but the computer stayed on, with the generator buzz kicking in. Piet checked the time. 3AM again. The schedule was true this night. He thought over and over about that night and eventually found he couldn’t help himself. He got up from the computer and found the torch. Immediately after writing it down everything felt off. Or familiar, like Marykie’s presence was in the house.

He left and started his way down to the dam. It was cold, if not colder than that night, and again, eerily quiet with a lack of animal presence. As he drew closer to the water he thought he could hear voices, but when he reached the water there was nobody there. Yet he could still hear a voice, and it turned out it was Marykie’s voice, calling him from the still of the water.

He was hesitant. Almost frightened at this stage. He couldn’t really be hearing Marykie’s voice, could he? It would be impossible.

Piet crept closer to the water, and thought he could see Marykie above it, hovering naked and covered in a dark blue haze. She was wrapped in the flat but finger-like leaves of the hyacinth, and bore a head of bright purple hyacinth flowers, creating a kind of radial mirage pulsing from her head. 

He was so close to the water now, he could feel the cold coming off it, bursting through the layers of clothes he was wearing. The ground seemed to throb below him, and he felt the damp seeping into his boots, through his socks, making his feet numb, but also sore. The long finger-like hyacinth leaves came slithering from the dam and wrapped around his legs, then he was drowning.

While his lung filled with water, and the cold bruised his skin, he could hear Marykie talking.

“Piet, my lief, I’m so glad you’ve joined us. Now you understand that she’s real. We can become one, but, oh wait, you need to finish writing to Marelize. She needs to know about the hyacinth mother too. She needs to save herself from the dying world. We’ll be together soon.”

Piet was released from his drowning. He woke up in his bed, freezing, soaked in water, and hacking out the excess liquid that had built up in his lungs. As he heaved the water out, he noticed the whole room was wet, and there was hyacinth everywhere. Beautiful blue and purple flowers adorned his floor and stuck to the walls and cupboards. He collapsed back into bed exhausted,  unable to muster the strength to struggle to the bathroom and get out of the wet clothes that were making his skin sting. Finally he managed, and dried himself down with a towel. The worst of the cold took some minutes to get out of him. Then he tiptoed across the frosted cold floor of damp and hyacinth to the closet and yanked out something warm to put on. The room was too cold. He couldn’t deal with it then, he left and went to Marelize’s old bedroom, still filled with all her stuff, and collapsed onto the bed, covering himself with blankets and stuffed animals until he reached a bearable temperature.

As he lay there, the generator buzz kicked in, and he realised had no idea what time it was, or how much time had passed. His cell phone wouldn’t switch on, fried out from his drowning, if he had indeed drowned, if anything from the previous night had actually happened. He went downstairs to the television to get his bearings. It was the next day. Next morning in fact. He was in the 9AM to 11:30AM load shedding slot. He put on the rugby, but after a couple minutes the generator cut, and the TV went black, so he went and got a Castle, and came back to stare at the black screen. At 11:30AM, the power didn’t come back on, and he grumbled, before falling asleep on the couch.

When he woke up at around 4PM, the power was still out, and he knew he’d have to go get more petrol.

~~

The power was out for all of three days. Piet was lost as ever as to his next move. He could not explain the events and did not want to think about it either, and you can’t linger on things like that as that’ll be the end of you, and you’ll be thinking and saying strange things like Marykie had been. All kinds of corridors would spawn in the maze of your mind with their own assorted entrances and exits helping things that shouldn’t to come out. You had to be practical before the things in your mind started to unhinge, and the darkness engulfed you and you’d be ranting about creatures at the dam and the wegraping, and the church would ostracize you, with your peers thinking you’re mal.

That was that. It was a dream. That was the end of it. He simply needed to finish his email to Marelize. Everything would be sorted and life would move on. Back to normal, just like that, as easy as changing a lightbulb.  It was 3:20AM and the generator buzz went dead, so the lights and rugby cut out, and once again, once again, Piet was left in darkness and silence. Three days with no power while trying to put the pieces of your life back together meant Piet had forgotten to get more petrol. The dark seemed less menacing this time though, as at least he had reached a point of resoluteness. 

~~

“So ja Marelize, I guess that’s that. I can’t be sure exactly, but one night your mother went back to the dam without me. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I struggle to sleep at night now. Maybe if I had been awake she couldn’t have snuck off like that. That fokken psychiatrist warned me she might need constant watching, so ja, maybe I made a mistake there, but you can’t always listen to these people who make up all this kak about mental illness and new genders, and all this weird kak. I mean imagine what Afrikaners of the old school would think of such softness after all we achieved in this country. Jissus, it’s a bloody shame.

“Not to end on a sour note. So ja, now you know. Of course, please don’t send this email to other people as I’ve already said it’s a bit of a difficult situation and we want people to remember your mother as she was, you know? Not as a suicidal with some fake mental illness but just a strong and loving Afrikaner wife and mother. A person one with the church and willing to serve God. You don’t need to reply or anything that’s fine, I just thought you of all people should know the truth. It was too much for me to hold inside.

“I wish you all God’s blessings and a fruitful life my lief! Always remember this is all God’s plan and he presents hardships that we can always overcome. I will overcome, and I’m sure you will as well. Enjoy the UK! It’s much better than here, and even if we don’t talk, I take great comfort knowing you’re in a country that actually has a future.

You’re loving father,

Piet.”

Piet sat around for a while mustering up his courage. He felt his resoluteness return and clicked send on the email. An email that had taken him a lifetime to write. An email he felt had drained something of his life essence. Everything felt final now, even as the power went out and his generator kicked in with that familiar buzz. For the first time in a while Piet felt a sense of ease and comfort.

Piet put on some relaxing treffers, and just sat for a moment. A calm breeze passed through and he remembered cleaning the hyacinth from his bedroom, and how cold it had been in there for days, and how the purples and blues still stained some of the wall and ceiling. Marykie’s scent had lingered in the room and sometimes he saw that radial mirage of her hair pulsing on the ceiling before he fell asleep at night. Nothing to be concerned about. Just his mind playing tricks on him.

Just then, he got a new email notification. First he balked at the notion that Marelize had already responded, before gathering his senses, and taking a proper look at the sender and subject. It was from the estate management, and was marked, “Tragedy in the Estate”. Concerned, he opened it as if he’d been waiting for it and read.

“Dear residents of the estate. We regret to inform you of the tragic events of last night, where the family of number 57 all drowned in the dam. Currently we are scarce on details, but somehow it appears they all willingly walked into the dam from one of the boat entrances and drowned. Their daughter was one of the top young Olympic swimmers to come from South Africa, making the even more both strange and unfortunate. Updates will follow as we find out more.”

Piet’s knee began to tingle, and he felt cold. It was nothing to worry about as winter was still in full swing despite that abnormal rain which had occurred. It generally only rained in summer in Hartbeespoort. It was fine. Piet’s knee stopped hurting, and over the music he had been playing he could hear Marykie’s beautiful choir voice singing to him from the dam. He paused the music and listened.