My Only Story. Deon Wiggett
the article lists the workers’ tasks, which ‘basically involve cleaning the hostels, [doing] linen and laundry, and cleaning the teachers’ flats. Sometimes service in the kitchen is also required.’
But all’s well that ends well. ‘Although it is a lot of work for so few workers, everybody is happy and they do not complain about the amount of work,’ Stabilis reports.
I would love to contact these segregated workers from 1991 to hear what they think of what was written back then, but the story in Stabilis does not include their names or any quotes.
I turn the page and a story at the bottom of page 4 catches my eye. ‘New blood for STABILIS’ it reads. And underneath: ‘Last year we unfortunately had to bid Mr Breytenbach farewell when he left for Willowmore.’
What do you mean Willem left for Willowmore?
Moreover, where the fuck is Willowmore?
In this museum, I thought I would learn how Willem’s seven missing years ended. Yet here I am and it seems I am actually at the beginning. I will need more yearbooks.
I go back into Estie’s office, grab an armful, and walk out with lopsided urgency. On the glass-topped exhibition case, I fumble through the yearbook for 1990, when Stabilis says he left.
I find the staff picture and I do not even need to scan it. From a sea of teachers’ faces, Willem’s leaps out at me like a stab in the eye. Willem grinning at the camera like the cat who got the cream; parasite and bullfrog rolled into one.
Willem taught at Grey College for two years only, and he was involved in many extramural activities. I learn this from the pictures in the only yearbooks in which he appears: 1989 and 1990.
We are talking typical high-school yearbook pictures here. At school, maybe you also had a day once a year when school pictures were taken. Some professional photographer comes to your school, sets up his expensive-looking professional equipment, and then proceeds to fill the school day by taking pictures of all configurations in which schoolchildren occur. Class pictures. Then sports teams. Societies. Hostels. Achievements. Novelties. The intercom in the classroom buzzes all day long: ‘Will all under-15 rugby teams come to the hall immediately for photos; all under-15 rugby players to the hall immediately.’
It is one of the best school days of the year, as the photos keep interrupting the eternal monotony of youth. No schoolwork can be done, because half the class plays rugby.
Paging through the yearbook, I can picture these scenes from decades ago. Willem and twenty-six boys from Stabilis have been called over the intercom. The teacher and the boys goof around as they wait for the photographer to make some technical adjustment. They exchange little jokes that sometimes just cross a line; Willem has a familiar manner with the boys, so they have a familiar manner with him. He is not like the other teachers. You can really talk to Willem. You can tell him things and trust him to tell no one. If a broad-thinking adult is called for, Willem is who you will call.
I take pictures of everything. If Willem is in a picture, I take a picture. Every configuration in which he had access to boys from Grey College; each boy’s name printed in the caption below it. In here, in these long-ago photos, are the pieces of the puzzle.
14
I am back in Johannesburg, back in my loft, with 199 new pictures from a twenty-four-hour trip. By the end of winter, I will know these pictures – these strange boys’ names and faces – like we went to school together.
I make printouts of the 199 photos, which is an extravagance in the face of ecological cataclysm, but the only way I can keep track. Kind of. To Riaan’s further disappointment, the printouts mark a tipping point for our loft. In addition to the index cards, there are now basically 200 pages divided into piles in a haphazard fashion. If Marie Kondo were to materialise in the loft, Riaan would instantly dematerialise from shame.
I must bid you two paragraphs’ worth of narrative housekeeping. First: I do not believe in hierarchies of rape, because it denigrates some of its forms. I was raped in the mouth – am I therefore luckier than someone who was raped in the anus, but not as lucky as someone who was just ‘molested’? Progressive law, such as South Africa’s, no longer differentiates between the kinds of rape, and neither do I. All sex abuse will fuck you up; by exalting anal and vaginal rape, we discourage the acknowledgment of sex abuse in all its forms. In this book, as in life, if I touch your penis without your consent, I am raping your penis.
Second: as I introduce you to more suspected survivors, it becomes harder to protect everyone’s identity. If I note, for instance, that I spoke to a Grey boy who is now a matador in Spain, that does narrow down the options. Therefore, in addition to blanket pseudonyms, in these pages I may have to fudge an occasional geographic or personal detail to protect the men who spoke to me. But never, ever will I fudge anything that Willem did to anyone. Their privacy deserves to be respected, but their stories deserve to be told.
Each of the 199 photos now strewn about in piles is accompanied by a caption providing the boys’ names, but only to a degree. Their surnames are there, and so are their first initials, so I see row upon row of – not their real names, as you are now assured – J Smit, A Smit, D de Klerk, G de Klerk, B Smit, T Smit. I will have to find out their first names, and then track down these young boys who are now men older than me.
Anyone I cannot find gets an index card. Everyone I can find gets an index card and a sensitive message of the kind my sage-like therapist taught me to send.
There are many, many ways to get the message wrong, and maybe only one to get it right. The message must be a dog whistle, but only for dogs who are ready to hear it.
In my loft, as I manage to track down a boy in a picture, I may write: ‘Dear Neels, I’m a Johannesburg writer and I’m working on a big justice project. I got your name from an old Grey College yearbook and found you via Facebook. I am investigating a teacher from your time at Grey; are you maybe willing to have a chat? No pressure, hey, you can completely ignore this message if you want to. All the best!’
The tortuous prose serves a purpose: I must allow for all eventualities, because I do not know what happened to anyone my message may reach. Every guy I contact is a potential rape survivor, and I do not know the extent of his amnesia.
In detective novels, amnesia is dramatic. A mysterious stranger with an unfamiliar accent comes to in a hospital bed, unable to recall an apparent chain of recent tragedies. In real life, most forms of amnesia are not so apparent. We forget specific events, and then necessarily do not remember the forgetting. That’s dissociative traumatic amnesia for you. You are raped, which is impossible, and therefore it did not happen, because it could not.
If my message reaches a guy who has forgotten his abuse, I must not force him. I cannot make him remember if he is not ready. If I ask too specific a question – ‘Were you ever raped by Willem Breytenbach, hey?’ – I might re-traumatise him. Our brains bury these things for a reason.
The message cannot be too pushy either. Raped people hang on to the lessons they have learned. Men want to trap you. An ambush could always be imminent. Seemingly good people are not to be trusted, because things are not what they seem.
In my loft, I try to navigate the pitfalls. Only if I am supremely lucky will my message reach a man who is angry about being raped. Angry like me. These are the brothers I am looking for. Men who are furious and want to keep other boys from losing what we did. These men will hear a dog whistle, and when the message says ‘justice project’ and ‘a teacher from your time’, they will think: This sounds like it could be Willem Breytenbach, because he was at Grey when I was, and a justice project sounds like it could be about the sex stuff. Who is this Deon Wiggett, though? Is he to be trusted?
Aside from men who can help and men who forgot and men who remember, there lurks another danger: people who remain loyal to Willem. People who will say something if I say his name – but to him, and not to me. If an explicit claim reaches Willem, it would be premature defamation.
In