Then we heard a shallow cough.
Fiamma had flung herself down under a bush to steady her breathing. She was halfway up the bank.
“Leave me alone,” Fiamma cried, as she staggered out into the bright light and up the bank toward the graves and the open air. We hesitated. Perhaps we would have given up. But then she tripped and fell over something.
We were onto her.
Meg, who was the fastest runner, caught up with her at the graves and gave her a playful tap on her behind. “Lie down and be our Madeline,” she said, giggling, accustomed to watching her father beat her younger sisters.
Fiamma panted, clutching her throat, “Leave me alone. I can’t breathe. Ann, make them go away,” she begged and clambered up onto Sir George’s tomb to escape. We were sure she was only pretending not to be able to breathe, just playing at being the victim, the martyr, once again.
Ann, who had followed along with the rest of us, still clutching her blue book in her hands, shook her head and said, “Too late, Princess Fiamma.”
“Get her! Get her!” Sheila said, pulling a piece of long, wet grass from the round and pretending to ship Fiamma’s white legs. Fiamma jumped up and down on the gray marble as though she were trampling on grapes, kicking out at us as we slapped at her. She did not seem to understand that we were only playing.
“Smack her! Smack her!” Pamela shouted, grabbing a stick from the ground and waving it in the air. “Down, down, down on your bed, Madeline!” she commanded.
We were all gathered around now in the shade of the frangipani tree. Sweat blinded us. Our heads throbbed, and our mouths were dry. The mosquitoes swarmed in droves, biting our arms and calves. We smacked at them. We echoed Pamela, “Madeline, Madeline, you have to be our Madeline.”
Fiamma’s jiggling white legs made us giggle. She looked like a puppet on a string, her arms and legs jerking. Our eyes glinted with merriment. There was Princess Fiamma, her face streaked with mud and sweat, jumping up and down on the gray marble slab that covered the illustrious bones of Sir George. She had lost her velvet hair ribbon in the chase, and her pale hair tumbled crazily across her forehead and into her eyes. Her chest rose and fell. She was panting and wheezing.
Sheila was putting it all down in her head.
Fiamma’s face was puce, and a thin trickle of blood seeped down her calf where someone her scratched her with a stick. The blood frightened her, and she whispered hoarsely, “Stop it, please. You are behaving like a bunch of barbarians.” She was slowing down, as though treading water. She was jumping back and forth, from one side to the other of the tomb, driven by our hands, our sticks, and pieces of wet grass. She was breathing loudly.
Di was growing impatient. “Keep still! Do what you did for Miss G,” she shouted and threw her stick hard at Fiamma. It caught her in the right eye. Fiamma lifted her hand to it and plumped down blindly on the marble. She lunged out at us and scratched and bit and pulled at hair; she kicked at us angrily, catching Di in the bosom.
“You idjut, you got my boosie!” she shouted, suddenly furious. “Get her! Get her!” she urged, and the twins jumped up onto the tomb. One on each side, they held Fiamma down.
“Go for the bum! Go for the bum!” Pamela shouted. Then we all took up the chant: “Go for the bum!”
When Fiamma tried to get up, the twins pushed her down hard, one on either side. They flipped her over onto her stomach and pulled up her tunic and smacked her behind with a stick. We all smacked her behind with sticks. Meg smacked harder and harder, yelling loudly, her dark hair falling into her eyes.
Fiamma was scratching and biting desperately, more and more frightened, and the more she fought, the tighter the twins were obliged to hold her down. If she had let us play with her, perhaps, nothing much would have happened. She tried to cry out, but only her ragged breathing escaped. Anyway, the only ones who could have heard her were the swimmers and God and, perhaps, Miss G.
“Give me s snot rag. Shut her up,” Di shouted, while we all watched, fascinated. Di grabbed Ann’s dirty handkerchief and shoved it into Fiamma’s mouth. Her face was purple now, her eyes bloodshot. She was trying to say something or reach her inhaler with her waving hands, but Ann grabbed them and tied them with her tunic belt. Mary tied her feet together. Then all we could hear was Fiamma’s ragged heaving and panting.
“Hey, quit hurting her, she can’t breathe properly,” Fuzzie said softly, but no one heeded. We did not let her through the circle we had formed around the tomb. We pushed Fiamma’s gag further into her mouth, and someone pulled down her knickers, exposing her bare behind. She lay sprawled before us, a white doll, helpless, our plaything.
“I’m Porphyro, and she’s my Madeline,” Meg cried.
“Do her, do her,” everyone chanted.
“Up the bum, up the bum,” Di called out.
No one was paying attention to Fiamma’s face.
In the blinding white light she lay on the marble tomb, our victim, bound hands and feet, as on an altar, with the priestess, Ann, brandishing her book, watching what was happening, the slaves gathered around the victim, leaning over her, the rest of us, inserting whatever came to hand – it was mainly sticks, though Lizzie, who was always more elegant than the rest, had found the stem of a wild rose – into Fiamma’s behind. One by one we thrust something hard and sharp into her tight, child’s orifices, while she gagged and tried to scream.
Swimming
We stare into one another’s eyes from both sides of the grave, as though gathered around a table for an evening meal. Our faces are brought nearer by the light of the southern sunset. Our makeup has washed away. We wear no jewelry, no fancy clothes, no camouflage. We see the lines, the sag and fall, the indistinct, watery gazes. We see ourselves in one another’s sad eyes, relieved that this reunion has ended. No one speaks.
A change goes through us: Meg slings an arm around Di’s shoulder; Fuzzie hands Ann a handkerchief; Bobby Joe removes a burr from Bobby Jean’s sleeve. For a moment we huddle together, as though the presence of one another can shut out the outside world, the watery wastes, the fast-encroaching dark.
We stand together and watch the sunset char the sky, as if for the first time. We look across the marble grave as the red light kindles the river’s memory, sparks down the hills, flames the frangipanis, ignites the vast sky. Lit up, our small world widens.
Fuzzie suggests we swim the river. We mention bilharzias and the possibility of quicksand. She does not listen but runs through the lion-colored grass down the bank to the water. Her modesty vanishes in the blinding glare. Piece by garish piece, she strips. We notice she still wears her vest, as her mother told her to do, so many years ago. Fuzzie’s milky, freckled flesh is still firm and fresh. Without her clothes she looks almost like the girl we remember from long before, the tender, plump body, tight in its pink skin, and the tight auburn curls. We watch her wade into the brown water and pat the surface with her palms. “It’s warm. Come on in,” she says and floats on her back, staring up at the blazing sky. Then she swims out to the middle of the river and dives down and comes up somewhere else. She keeps plunging.
The twins are the next to discard their identical long gray skirts and worn tennis shoes. Then everyone undresses. Ann removes her glasses, unbuttons her shirt, and says, “Oh, hell, why not?” You can still see her ribs, and her skin looks greenish in the glare. Even Di pulls off her dark dress and lace corsets, and rolls down the dark stockings she still wears. She lumbers into the water. Meg’s bare body dazzles, her breasts still firm, her nipples pink, her stomach smooth. We splash one another and shout like the wild girls we once were.
We imagine Miss G striding up and down the bank, her yellow whistle between her lips, watching us swim, exhorting us to slice through the water, to knock them flat.
Meg swims sidestroke swiftly, going through the clinging reeds and the glistening rocks. She bobs up and down. Di does a fast crawl, avoiding rocks and rotted tree trunks and ferns. Sheila turns on her back and strikes out, stretching her arms straight, brushing her ears with her arms, kicking with the regular rhythm that Miss G taught her.
We all swim down the river. There is a distant call as of a dreamer’s voice, clear and shrill. We go onward in silence, expectant.
Then, look, there she is, out there, kicking up a rainbow spray. We feel her presence drawing us on, as we swim fast, striking out bravely through the dark water.
We see Fiamma, our dead sister, our wild girlhood, our lost dreams. We watch her, so slow and languorous on land, cutting through the water, leading the way with easy, strong strokes. Then we clamber, naked, up the bank, and the sun dips behind the wattles.
We do not walk back the way we came. We take another path and go slowly across the flat veld beneath the darkling sky.
A Note on the Author
Sheila Kohler was born in South Africa. She is the author of the novels The Perfect Place and The House on R Street and of a short-story collection, Miracles in America. She lives in New York City.
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