The Shape of Him by Gill Schierhout

Author:Gill Schierhout [Gill Schierhout]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

4

HERBERT WAKEFORD IS not sure whether or not he has cleaned his teeth. He cleans them again, and then he goes out to sit on the stoep. He watches an Indian mynah bird strutting about after kitchen scraps. After some time the bird scuttles off, the grass settling quiet in its wake. One of the nurses brings Herbert his old burlap bag. He nods a thank-you and she walks away. Her firm behind swings out of sight as she goes indoors, leaving Herbert here in the heat of the stoep. He checks the contents of his bag: a couple of fountain pens, a few old notebooks tied together with string, his anvil, bits of leftover rubber, a length of gut and three big-eyed needles, one still threaded.

Herbert picks up a cut-out sole that is half attached to an upper and he begins to push the needle in through the thick dark rubber and out the other side of the canvas, in and out, in and out. His chorea is stilled when he sews. This is because of the pressure of the rubber and canvas against his fingers. Or is it simply because he is making a pair of shoes for his daughter? Herbert cannot say. He only knows that today he must not get the black rubber marks on his best white shirt. There is something different about this day, isn’t there? Herbert’s fingertips trace the straight grooves of the rubber resting here between his hands.

You can always tell where Maggie has been by her footprints. Herbert knows this, for we liked to speak of it. The other children wear Bata soft-soled takkies, their patterns make wavy criss-cross lines in the dirt; but the print left by Maggie’s shoes has always been straight, as straight as the roads through the Karoo. When Herbert rethreads the needle, his hand trembles, a stiff twig caught on the edge of a waterfall. The nurse is back beside him. She stands so close that he can smell her sex. She is tapping him on the shoulder now, holding out his pills. Herbert has swallowed pills here in Doornfontein for almost twenty years. Year upon year upon year, each day, there is not even a break at Christmas or Easter. Sometimes a new doctor comes and then the next week, or the next, the colour of the pills is different or there are two instead of three, or another shape is added.

‘Time for your sweeties,’ the nurse says.

There are five pills now mid-morning. Herbert counts them. He opens his mouth. The nurse places the pills one by one on his outstretched tongue. She passes him a glass. Herbert takes gulp after gulp of water. She walks on, rattling her medicine trolley. The nurse has moved on without so much as a ‘thank you’. Some nurses are like that, not realising how much harder their job would be if the patients were less compliant. The jagged edges of the white tablets get stuck in the throat sometimes.

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