Beautiful Screaming of Pigs Read Free

of a kudu above the fireplace. ‘And with this one, I
took that.’ An impala near the door. ‘This little baby brought that one down.’ A warthog, its bristles shining.
    His proudest claim of all was the leopard in the entrance hall. Preserved in its entirety on an island of wood, teeth drawn back in a snarl.
    As a boy I was horrified and fascinated by the leopard. I would lie for hours on the cool tiles of the floor, trying to look down its throat into the darkness it contained. I imagined my father,
down on one knee, holding steady while the leopard charged. It was a huge disappointment to learn later – from Malcolm, who had been there – that this wasn’t the way it had
happened at all. ‘We chased it for miles in the Land Rover,’ he said. ‘It was wounded, it couldn’t run properly. Dad shot it in a tree when it tried to get away. He
didn’t even get out.’
    My father, for all his ornaments and paintings, looked as if he belonged outdoors. He was a fat and sweaty man, with brown hair cropped short and a neat moustache, stained at the edge with
nicotine. He had a heart problem, but he liked to smoke cigars and drink. He had blue eyes so pale as to be almost without colour. He would stare at me sometimes, with amazement or disapproval,
from those eyes, rimmed with resin and short white hairs, like the bristles of the warthog on the wall.
    ‘Why are you so small?’ he demanded.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You must eat properly. Do you eat?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Ellen, does he eat?’
    ‘Yes, Howie, what are you talking about? You’ve seen him eating.’
    ‘Do you play sport, Patrick? At school?’
    ‘He doesn’t like sports, Howie, you know that.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ he bellowed, surging up suddenly onto his short and slightly bowed legs. ‘Come with me,’ he commanded, taking me by the back of my neck.
    He took me, on that day and others, to the broad expanse of lawn outside. I would stand, trembling with a fear that I could smell in my nose, at the edge of the flowerbed. And wait. ‘You
must watch,’ he told me. ‘Watch it all the way into your hands. You got me? Don’t blink.’
    And then he would hurl the ball: oval, dark, a dangerous shape of leather. It hissed toward me through the late afternoon, an embodiment of all that was most frightening to me, and all I could
never do: I dropped the ball. I turned my head in fright and it would glance off my blunt hands, spinning away into the flowers. ‘Sorry,’ I cried. ‘Sorry, sorry... ’
    I ran to fetch it.
    ‘Give it up, Dad. Don’t even bother.’
    This from Malcolm, who would sit on the lowest step of the veranda. And laugh.
    ‘Leave me alone,’ I said, as much to my father as to him.
    ‘That’s enough, Malcolm,’ Dad said.
    And kicked the ball at me. This time I caught it: by some chance it found its way into my hands. I tossed it carelessly back again.
    ‘Well done,’ Dad said encouragingly.
    ‘That was lucky,’ Malcolm whispered.
    ‘Leave him, Mal.’
    I can still see my brother as he was on the step that day: sunburnt, sulky, his hair too long. He could catch any ball that was thrown at him. He was captain of his rugby team at school. He
couldn’t spell or do sums, but he had a rebellious spirit that couldn’t be quashed. He kicked stones, with his tie pulled down and the top button on his school shirt undone. He carved
his name into the wooden desk-tops in the classrooms and swore savagely and spat expertly sideways. He had a yellow mark on his first finger and thumb from smoking. He was my father’s son. I
was the impostor, with my mother’s dark eyes; while Malcolm had Dad’s icy stare.
    The two of them played ball together on the lawn outside. It wasn’t an awkward exercise with them; it was truly a game. They practised passes and tackles, stitching lines of movement that
tied them invisibly together. Malcolm could kick and catch the ball on the run. Sweating, grimacing with pleasure, they would come back