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Authors: Jenny Hobbs
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attendance is crucial to the Digby & Smith superior interment service. The pall-bearers need to sit down now. He catches the eye of the Reverend, who flaps a hand to indicate that they should take their seats. Retief Alberts shuffles to the wheelchair waiting for him at the far end of the Moth pews.
The bishop frowns at the disturbance, but carries on in his fruity voice, ‘And though after my skin worms destroy this body –’
Sam tries not to think of the worms lying in wait to feast on his Grampa. They’d gone fishing in a small boat on Durban Bay once with a squirming mass of earthworms in a billycan. Grampa had shown him how to find them in the garden by digging in the damp earth where Charlie watered his mealies behind the khaya. You’d see a bit of pinkish worm trying to wriggle out of sight, then you’d hook your finger under it and pull, like stretching elastic, until it snapped into your hand: clammy-cold and squirting poo as it writhed.
It was even worse baiting hooks with the boat rocking near the slimy pilings under Maydon Wharf where things lurked in the water. The first time, when he couldn’t keep the worm still, Grampa said, ‘Come on now, boy. Grasp the bloody thing and push the point through one end. Then thread it on from side to side.’ He felt sick when the hook went in and the worm jerked. He looked up and said, ‘I can’t,’ but Grampa barked, ‘Don’t be so wet. It’s just a stupid worm,’ his face all cross.
Later, when Sam could crucify worms without his fingers trembling, Grampa caught a spotted grunter and showed him how to kill it by slicing crossways with his fishing knife through the spine at the back of its head. ‘Most humane way,’ he said as the fish shivered and died. He then turned it over and cut a long slit up its belly to show Sam how to clean it. ‘Pull out the guts with your fingers, like this. Careful of the gills. They’ve got sharp edges. Look.’ He scrabbled in the slithering mass with a knobbly forefinger. ‘These red arcs are the gills. That pale chunk is the heart, still beating. Do you want it?’
Sam steeled himself and said yes, then held the small pulsing lump of flesh in his palm, watching until the pulses slowed and stopped. ‘Do hearts live longer than bodies?’ he asked.
‘No. Usually they give up first and then you die.’ Grampa was busy packing his fishing bag.
‘What is dying, actually?’ Sam wanted to know because a dog he’d loved had died of biliary only a month before.
The old man gave him a sharp look. ‘Just like going to sleep.’
‘But you said some of your friends had a horrible death.’
‘That was different. They were fighting a war. If you’re very sick or your body stops working, dying is like –’ He thought for a bit, then said, ‘Like getting out of a bad place. Getting free.’
Sam looks at his grandfather’s flag-draped coffin in front of the altar, and thinks, Is Grampa free now? Are cemetery worms the same as the ones I used to dig out? How do worms get into coffins and bodies if they don’t have teeth?
Lin feels him shudder and puts her arm round his shoulders.
‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.’ The bishop’s hooded eyes trawl the congregation to see who is present. The mayor in one of the raised VIP pews at the back, wearing an orange headwrap that matches the intricate embroidery on her brown shweshwe robe under the mayoral chain. A number of councillors. Rugby representatives. Prominent Durban businessmen. The editors of the Mercury, the Daily News, the Natal Witness and the Sunday Tribune. Knots of journalists and photographers. TV news teams. Two pews of Moths. Quite a turn-out for an old man.
Reverend George, poised to take over with Psalm 39, worries about the eulogies. At the planning meeting he’d suggested inviting just the mayor, a representative each from SARU and Breweries, and J J’s friend, Mr Pillay.
‘We must have one of the
The bishop frowns at the disturbance, but carries on in his fruity voice, ‘And though after my skin worms destroy this body –’
Sam tries not to think of the worms lying in wait to feast on his Grampa. They’d gone fishing in a small boat on Durban Bay once with a squirming mass of earthworms in a billycan. Grampa had shown him how to find them in the garden by digging in the damp earth where Charlie watered his mealies behind the khaya. You’d see a bit of pinkish worm trying to wriggle out of sight, then you’d hook your finger under it and pull, like stretching elastic, until it snapped into your hand: clammy-cold and squirting poo as it writhed.
It was even worse baiting hooks with the boat rocking near the slimy pilings under Maydon Wharf where things lurked in the water. The first time, when he couldn’t keep the worm still, Grampa said, ‘Come on now, boy. Grasp the bloody thing and push the point through one end. Then thread it on from side to side.’ He felt sick when the hook went in and the worm jerked. He looked up and said, ‘I can’t,’ but Grampa barked, ‘Don’t be so wet. It’s just a stupid worm,’ his face all cross.
Later, when Sam could crucify worms without his fingers trembling, Grampa caught a spotted grunter and showed him how to kill it by slicing crossways with his fishing knife through the spine at the back of its head. ‘Most humane way,’ he said as the fish shivered and died. He then turned it over and cut a long slit up its belly to show Sam how to clean it. ‘Pull out the guts with your fingers, like this. Careful of the gills. They’ve got sharp edges. Look.’ He scrabbled in the slithering mass with a knobbly forefinger. ‘These red arcs are the gills. That pale chunk is the heart, still beating. Do you want it?’
Sam steeled himself and said yes, then held the small pulsing lump of flesh in his palm, watching until the pulses slowed and stopped. ‘Do hearts live longer than bodies?’ he asked.
‘No. Usually they give up first and then you die.’ Grampa was busy packing his fishing bag.
‘What is dying, actually?’ Sam wanted to know because a dog he’d loved had died of biliary only a month before.
The old man gave him a sharp look. ‘Just like going to sleep.’
‘But you said some of your friends had a horrible death.’
‘That was different. They were fighting a war. If you’re very sick or your body stops working, dying is like –’ He thought for a bit, then said, ‘Like getting out of a bad place. Getting free.’
Sam looks at his grandfather’s flag-draped coffin in front of the altar, and thinks, Is Grampa free now? Are cemetery worms the same as the ones I used to dig out? How do worms get into coffins and bodies if they don’t have teeth?
Lin feels him shudder and puts her arm round his shoulders.
‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.’ The bishop’s hooded eyes trawl the congregation to see who is present. The mayor in one of the raised VIP pews at the back, wearing an orange headwrap that matches the intricate embroidery on her brown shweshwe robe under the mayoral chain. A number of councillors. Rugby representatives. Prominent Durban businessmen. The editors of the Mercury, the Daily News, the Natal Witness and the Sunday Tribune. Knots of journalists and photographers. TV news teams. Two pews of Moths. Quite a turn-out for an old man.
Reverend George, poised to take over with Psalm 39, worries about the eulogies. At the planning meeting he’d suggested inviting just the mayor, a representative each from SARU and Breweries, and J J’s friend, Mr Pillay.
‘We must have one of the
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