Winter was just around the corner, and the dry, crisp days were starting to give way to cold nights. Just the other morning, Gert had woken to discover frost flowers forming in the clay outside our tent. What I wouldn’t give for it to be October again, when steaming sunshine and warm thundershowers wrapped us in the earthy smells of the veld. It was still only April, and yet my father’s coat offered limited protection from the chill. I fell in and out of sleep, dreaming that my brother was there beside me. I heard my mother’s words, and the words of Sonja Erasmus — she had called me a mongrel, but why? Then, my brother’s voice. “Tell me a story, Corlie,” he pleaded. My mind teemed with imaginary characters — Ntombazi, the little dikkop that was too frightened to fly, the fisherman’s son who discovered a monster on the shore — but before long, their stories began to blur so that I didn’t know where to begin. I saw my brother’s round, white face watching me as I struggled to find the words.
What do You think about Stones For My Father (2011)?
