Degas' Dust. Carnie Matisonn
had. Joanne, the youngest, had even less experience of family and would end up coming to live with me when she was twelve and I was a young man on a career path.
When it came to ignoring or avoiding the bigger issues, my father was the master – the ultimate escapist – particularly when at home. He simply locked himself away in his world of make-believe. This saved him from following in his father-in-law’s footsteps off the edge of a building, but it also meant he quietly accepted his fate, which grew ever more unkind the more defeated he became.
As time wore on, he cared less for the responsibilities of husband and father and more for how to pass his remaining days in the least unpleasant ways possible. Predictably, that involved increasing amounts of alcohol.
Whatever relationship I had had with Natie was, to all intents, over.
Because of a dual accident of being born in December and starting school a year earlier than many others my age, at the age of sixteen – in 1962 – I matriculated. I set about gaining admission to a local university. It was something of a surprise for me to discover I needed a considerable deposit, payable on registration as a first-year student.
There was no way I would be able to afford even the registration, never mind the fees. I’d have to find a job and try to save money.
There was also the small matter of my brother Alan’s education. He was almost two years older than me, but as his birthday was in January he was only a year ahead of me at school. In the opinion of our fanatical headmaster, his marks had been so low he should have abandoned school in Standard 8 and become an artisan. But Alan was a quiet fellow who had made up his mind to become a doctor. His final-year results were not enough to blow back the hair of anyone at Wits University, but he somehow managed to also obtain a university pass in Afrikaans. That opened up a whole other world of possibility for him.
Without distinctions in any subjects and a decidedly average aggregate, Wits was out of the question. Their unwritten rule was a first-class matric with distinctions in maths and science as the bare minimum.
But these were interesting times. The University of Pretoria was an entirely Afrikaans university operating with substantial government grants on a modern campus with well-equipped laboratories and state-of-the-art equipment. Their facilities outshone those at Wits. It had a large sporting campus with amenities, gardens and recreational facilities that made the Wits offering pale by comparison. Academically, it could also hold its own. It was a statement by the apartheid government that Afrikaans was not only winning the present, but would have a stranglehold on the future too.
Despite this, and due mainly to reputation, the Pretoria university’s fees were less than half those at Wits and the entry requirements were also less stringent. The university had been established to give a leg up to Afrikaans graduates, and its policies arguably formed the basis on which today’s Black Economic Empowerment legislation is based. By definition, its students were meant to be Afrikaans-speaking Christians. All the same, Alan managed to enrol for his first year of medicine. One can only imagine what he told them to gain admission, but such was their enthusiasm for educating “Afrikaners” that they turned a blind eye to his low school results and welcomed him as a freshman in the faculty.
Alan moved to Pretoria and lived with Eva’s uncle and, later, her cousin. Shortly after he started, he summoned me to meet with him.
After explaining it had been no small feat to be accepted as a medical student and, after waiting for me to acknowledge all that he had been through, he said: “I am now going to need money to pay for my university fees, my anatomy skeleton, my books and course material; no one can do medicine part time. One of us will have to work.” He didn’t even pause for breath before adding: “Which is you.”
I was hardly surprised. But I wouldn’t be sold into indentured servitude without a word of resistance.
“And why so obviously me?” I asked him.
He replied coolly: “You’re only doing a BA and will have lots of time in between to work. And besides, you won’t pass anyway.”
It was no use getting angry. I knew my brother too well. He also knew he could depend on me just as I knew I would never be able to depend on him. In his mind, this was honestly what passed for a candid, practical discussion of a problem he had clearly already thought through, the solution to which was as undeniable as it was inescapable.
I took a deep breath and said: “Well, thank you for considering me for this honour. But what is the rest of your enterprising plan? Even if I do work to pay for both of us, we will need money for your registration fees right away.”
He’d thought about this too. “Eva’s brother-in-law Gerry told me I could come to him if I had financial problems.” Gerry was a successful ear, nose and throat specialist.
“So phone and ask him for a loan,” I told him. “And I’ll pay it back to him over a period of time.”
Alan dialled the number. Suddenly, it turned out, Uncle Gerry seemed to have developed acute amnesia, unable to recall anything about his earlier magnanimous gesture. Alan replaced the receiver despondently.
“You will have to call Gertie,” he said.
Gertie was our widowed aunt, Eva’s sister, who’d married a phenomenally successful insurance salesman, Chummy. He’d won the Sun Life of Canada prize for top agent in the world for nine consecutive years and published a book, Sales by the Million. Chummy had died of a heart attack aged just forty-four while on a visit to Japan – leaving Gertie wealthy. I made an appointment to visit her at Chummy’s old office in the city centre.
The interview started with an outburst from her as to what right Natie had to produce five children knowing full well he was incapable of supporting them. She went to great lengths to explain how she had been waiting for the day one of us would come to her, cap in hand.
Once her diatribe passed, I mustered the courage to explain how desperate we were. We immediately needed R47 to pay Alan’s registration fees, but I would repay it over only six months. Gertie didn’t appear to believe me and made a point of phoning the university in my presence to check whether it was the right amount and if it was due and owing.
She went straight back to her complaints. “Your parents had no right to have so many children. You are strong and healthy and there is no reason why you and your brother should not be labourers.”
Had it been only my future on the line, I would have left right there and then and made a point to never see Gertie again. But I had a feeling this was my brother’s one and only shot at realising his dream. There was simply nowhere else to turn.
So I kept trying to make it clear to her I was not asking for anything for myself. Leaving with nothing was not an option for me and she probably realised she was up against someone even more stubborn than she was.
I left her office with an undertaking that she would indeed pay Alan’s outstanding account directly and I could then repay her. It was then left to me to visit the university bookshop and come to an arrangement with them for credit on Alan’s behalf.
Gertie had humiliated me. I am not sure what I imagined I’d encounter: perhaps an understanding relative who might deem it a pleasure to advance funds for a bright and promising nephew struggling to pay his fees at medical school. It wasn’t as if we were begging her for money to put a drug-addicted brother through rehab. Alan was a good boy with big dreams and she had more than enough money to spare. I’d perhaps half expected her to offer to pay for him out of sheer kindness. But this was not to be.
My resentment at her remark about our being better suited to becoming labourers also never left me.
But at least my brother had his chance to become a doctor – and I wanted him to succeed more than ever, if only to prove people like Gertie wrong. I had few doubts he would excel, despite his previously poor academic record. I knew that once Alan put his mind to something, it was as good as done.
He would make a brilliant doctor, I thought, though probably too cold, a little too lacking in sympathy. All the same, he would not