The Secret Message

© Linda Ann Strang

For about an hour, Coralie is very happy with her demanding captive. She picks her up to look at the ducks on the pond far below the office window.

“Can they fly?” Waarda asks, putting her finger into her mouth while she waits for the answer.

“Yes. Probably.”

“White people can't fly.”

“Really,” says Coralie who is white – very pale, in fact. She holds the little Indian girl even closer, hugging her so tightly that the child wriggles in protest.

“Put me down,” she orders. Coralie does so reluctantly. The child climbs onto the chair at the desk and goes back to drawing a picture of a house; it has flowers around it – as large as trees. “Mommy read me a book with black people. They were slaves. They flew away. But the white people never catched them cause they couldn't fly,” Waarda mumbles meditatively as she provides her world with an oval sun.

“Once there was a book – a South African book – about a brave man who couldn't fly either. But he wasn't white. He was …”

Coralie doesn't go on because Waarda's mother has just walked into her office – in a cloud of sparkles like a fairy, or a djinn from a toddlers' edition of The Arabian Nights.

“Thanks for looking after her, sweetie, I hope she was good.” Nazneen smiles. They have acquired the habit of calling each other “sweetie” or “my dear” over years of working together, although they are not close – friendly, but definitely not close.

“Mommy, Mommy. Ramadan's over today, hey Mommy? We going to granny tonight, hey Mommy?”

“Yes, my angel,” she answers, touching her daughter's head, as if in blessing.

“She was a very good girl,” Coralie says watching the little brown girl hug her mother's legs.

“Well, I'm off home now. The pictures are sorted,” Nazneen says, lifting Waarda into her arms.

“Another issue of Cape Lifestyle put to bed.”

“Yes, thank goodness.”

“Well done. Enjoy breaking your fast.”

“We certainly will,” Nazneen says, cuddling her daughter.

Coralie walks with them down peach-coloured passages to the glass doors and waves goodbye. After strapping Waarda into her safety chair, Nazneen roars up the narrow street in her red BMW, racing off towards the end of Ramadan. Coralie is still waving, unseen, when they disappear around the corner; her last glimpse of them a glint from the sequins on the Muslim woman's scarf.

“Creative Writing tonight,” she speaks aloud into the empty reception area, as she closes the doors, trying to sound cheerful. She and Nazneen stayed behind long after their colleagues had left. As Coralie goes about, switching off lights and locking up, she finds that she really isn't looking forward to the class. Since her husband, Steven, has been going along as well she enjoys them much less than she did before. He has a way of dominating every group that he joins; it was the same thing at the Rotary Club, and the Amateur Dramatic Society. There is something larger than life about that man – like death, she mutters to herself bitterly.

Coralie takes a taxi to the university – her tired Toyota Corolla is in for repairs and Steven has control of the BMW in their household; she hasn't taken the flashy car out anywhere even once. She imagines herself roaring around like Nazneen, but wearing a full burqa; the freedom and anonymity seem quite appealing. She wouldn't mind being not much more than a pair of eyes sometimes.

After battling through the traffic, the taxi leaves her beside some oak trees. City lights are already beginning to glitter in the dusk and the class is underway when she arrives at the tutorial room.

“Coralie will read her poem right now,” the creative writing tutor says, punishing her for being late by putting her on the spot. Steven is already seated beside him, opposite her; he nods at his wife in greeting.

She fumbles around with her briefcase while the class stares and someone coughs at the back of the room.

“ The Secret Message ,” she manages to read, finally, cringing at the sound of trembling in her voice. She looks at her husband, as though for reassurance, and adds, “For S.” Steven smiles and acknowledges the dedication.

She continues, trying not to notice how much the page quivers in her hand as she reads:

Close the eyes of the observatories.

Close the eyes of the spies.

Switch off the lights in the satellite.

I am a secret message,

only to be whispered

under jacaranda trees

when mauve flowers are falling

onto the breast of the wind,

in its lonely tossing and turning.

Love, I have hidden myself

in the wings of the honey guide,

and I'm written in Sanskrit.

“Yes. Good,” says Bill, the tutor, even though she hasn't even finished yet.

“Lovely, darling,” says Steven. Then he takes a turn to read his poem to the class. It's something about homeless people – socially relevant of course. Steven, full of gravitas, has a knack for being relevant. He speaks confidently, his voice swelling through the room – no fear and trembling there. Everyone is impressed. But she does not listen to the praise he receives because she is hiding somewhere behind the blossoms of a Pride of India in a far off summer.

Next, a student called Erica reads her poem. Coralie returns from the flowers of her mind abruptly, pulled back into the seminar room and her plastic chair by a familiar image:

… in rose hair,

my aquamarine eyelashes.

I need you there.

Your penis, your penis.

You must be joking, thinks Coralie. Erica is a plump, blond-haired girl, with a lot of metal in her face and navel (her not too flat belly is always on display). Apparently she also likes to write love poems, if you can call them that. Erica's various studs glitter in the electric light before she sits down. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Studded. Steven, the tutor, and the other men in the class applaud most enthusiastically. It must be the penis. Or perhaps it's her glittering navel?

“Well done,” Coralie says to Erica when the class ends and they are all standing up or gathering their papers. “You know that poem of yours reminded me of something I read once. I can't quite recall …”

“Well, I don't know why that is, but thanks.” Erica says quickly – very busy with her leather handbag, which is also studded, Coralie notes. Then she turns to the older woman and says: “It must be so wonderful for you to be married to another writer. You don't know how lucky you are.”

“Yes,” says Coralie, a bit surprised by the ardent expression on the girl's face.

“And your husband writes so well,” Erica goes on.

“Yes, he does.”

“Such a talented guy. A civil engineer and he can write, paint, act …”

“Mechanical.”

“Pardon me?” Erica asks.

“He's a mechanical engineer, not civil.”

“Oh. Well, I think it's great you guys are studying again at your age.”

Coralie is trying to control herself but she feels too irritated to go on with this conversation. She leaves Erica as quickly as she can without seeming rude, brushing past some other students, and trying to attract Steven's attention to tell him that she is leaving.

But he and Bill are deep in conversation; Bill is slapping him on the shoulder and saying enthusiastically, “You should publish.”

Coralie examines her face in the ladies' room mirror as she brushes her hair. The overhead electric light is not flattering. Her eyes are dark hollows and the wrinkles on her forehead are emphatic. Her wavy hair shines like honey, though, and it springs up around her brush, with ecstatic electricity. Back in the Eighties, her sweetheart used to say she had heroine hair, making puns and playing with words as usual. “Love is the drug, and I'm hooked on you,” he would say, laughing. She feels hot tears in her throat and eyes. She drinks some water straight out of the tap to wash them away. The metal is cold on her lips, like a speculum.

She leaves the bathroom, swinging her briefcase jauntily as she turns the corner of the passage. Then she stops because she sees Erica and Steven deep in conversation in the shadows near the lifts. They are leaning close to each other, murmuring. Steven touches Erica's face with the tips of his fingers, lingeringly and, in response, Erica puts her hand on his chest. When they see Coralie they move apart quickly.

Steven speaks loudly and brightly: “Oh there you are, my dear. Let's be on our way then.”

Realization, like the hot-coldness of the bathroom metal spreads, from Coralie's mouth to her heart, her hands, and her stomach. She wants to be sick – but she squares her shoulders and smiles.

“Well,” says Steven as he drives them home through Claremont, “It was sweet of you to dedicate your poem to me.”

“Pleasure,” says Coralie. Pleasure is very far away.

“You didn't have to.” He sounds defensive. Does he feel bad because he has not ever dedicated a poem to her? Rain drizzles onto the windscreen. The iambic wipers seem to beat out: “Rose hair, rose hair … Rose hair, rose hair … Rose hair, rose hair.” The black lines chase each other backwards and forwards across the neon-smeared raindrops. Then it comes to her. That image is from a poem by an Arabian poet. Yusuf somebody? In fact, she has the book at home: Modern Poetry of the Arab World.

Later, they sit together in their kitchen, drinking hot chocolate: a perfect picture of companionable silence. She appreciates this room. It has yellow paint, white curtains, ornaments of dark blue glass, and even some Wedgewood dotted around tastefully. Rose. She knows that it takes more to accomplish a pretty kitchen than one would think. Hair. What is more, she would rather admire the décor than look at her husband at the best of times. Rose. The interior design reflects something of her personality; there is nothing of her personality about her husband. Hair. Her eyes rest on the shelf where the photographs are: Steven's three children from his previous marriage and her nieces and nephews. Rose. The reminder that they haven't had children together is particularly painful tonight. Hair.

Steven gets up heavily and looks out of the window with a flick of curtains. He turns to her as though he has something significant to tell her. He even opens his mouth, gaping a little.

“Yes,” says Coralie, trying to look understanding.

“Good night, old girl,” is all he says after all. He goes to bed, switching off lights along the passage.

As soon as she's sure he's asleep, she goes to the study that Steven has grudgingly shared with her over the years. She slaps the light back on and crouches in front of the bookcase, running her fingers along the papery spines. She has been afforded one shelf of her own out of seven. Book apartheid, Steven has laughingly called her desire to have her own shelf space, deftly putting her in the wrong.

Yes, she has always been possessive about her books, she must admit. They are important to her, each one like an irreplaceable friend.

It should be snug between her falling-apart copy of Jenny Hobbs's The Sweet Smelling Jasmine (which she has read over and over again) and Gina Nahai's Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith , but Modern Poetry of the Arab World is missing. She searches all the shelves, with a growing sense of urgency. She even looks through the desk drawers and, absurdly, under the green armchairs. But the telltale anthology simply isn't there.

She imagines them vividly now: Steven bringing Erica home with him one afternoon; their meandering into the study after sex; Erica idly going over to the bookshelf and saying something like, “Oh, this looks interesting. Can I borrow it?”

Coralie curls up in an armchair, hugging her knees. She cries mutedly, but she does not think about Steven much as she does so. Instead her thoughts return to Durban in the Eighties. She remembers kisses behind the Pride of India, Sagren's Tamil-dark hands on her face. She remembers calling him “my honey guide” in their love play. Their defiance of The Immorality Act was only whispered – at first. Then they grew bolder, risking imprisonment for their relationship.

She became pregnant, of course.

When she lost the baby, Coralie's mother wept and screamed in the hospital ward, not caring who heard her: “What you did with that coolie was disgusting. Now you're paying for it.”

Around that time, her father made several threatening phone calls to her Indian lover's parents – swearing and punching the door as he spoke to them.

For the sake of peace, Sagren's parents sent him away to Pretoria. He became politically active there and, eventually, went into exile. One time he sent her a postcard of jacaranda trees in flower – and that was the last time she heard from him.

Sagren used to teach English and History – she remembers peering through the classroom window to see him in action – a loving spy. Did the police ever torture him? This question has repeatedly infiltrated her nightmares. Let it not be so.

Then that other incident flits through her mind: they took one of Sagren's friends into custody and threw him out of a tenth story window. Defenestration it's called, so Latin, so defensible.

When she has smothered her grief – a skill that becomes ever easier with practice – she does what she intended to do all along: she opens a new file in her computer and types in: “The Secret Message - for Sagren Pillay.” She prints the poem and slips it into an envelope along with international reply coupons and a covering letter. Then she deletes Sagren's name right back to the S. and saves the changes. How ridiculous that Steven thought she meant him at the reading tonight.

Tomorrow she will post her poems to Canada, the US, England. Maybe, one day, Sagren – wherever he is – will discover her work. Caressing the envelope, she hopes he'll remember her.

She has not seen him for almost twenty three years, so probably not.

Coralie goes to the window and looks at the sky. She twists her fingers around the burglar bars. Mixed fragrances of rosemary, rain, lavender and dirt drift up to her from the garden. She can sense a falling star burning out a few miles and moments above Cape Town – another one that didn't make it.

“Honey guide,” she murmurs, “My love, my love.” White people can't fly.

Notes

The “rose hair” image in Erica's poem is based on ideas from Yusuf Al-Khal's ‘Prayers in a Temple' and Sa'di Yusuf's ‘Blue'; both appear in this anthology: al-Udhari, A. (Ed.) 1986. Modern Poetry of the Arab World . Harmondsworth: Penguin.