The Smell of Apples: A Novel Read Online Free

Coelen is one of the few decent ones, and the only one who became Miss World. These beauty queens usually get married to rich casanovas. I heard Mum say that Mitzi Stander, who was also Miss South Africa, died in a car crash the other day. She was hardly in her grave when Die Burger had an article about her husband already going out with the new Miss Orange Free State. Mum said we could only pray that Mitzi's own slate with the Lord was clean when she died.
    Dad came into the bedroom dressed in his black penguin suit.

    The Smell of Apples
    'And how do I look?' he asked, and crossed over the carpet so that we could take a good look from all sides. His dark moustache was trimmed and his mouth stood out more clearly.
    'Daddy, you look like Sean Connery,' said Use.
    'Ja,' I added, feeling so proud because Dad was becoming a general, 'Dad looks just as pretty as Mum.'
    'Handsome is probably a better word,' he said, and smiled at me, and tapped lightly with his fist against my chin. I could smell the Old Spice aftershave he uses for special occasions.
    'Handsome,' I said, and, 'I wish we could go with you and Mum.'
    'Just wait, my little bull,' Dad said a while later, when we were saying goodbye to them at the front door. 'Your time will come. For tonight, I just want you to take good care of your sister.' He winked at Use who snorted, and turned her eyes up in their sockets. She's forever rolling her eyes when someone speaks to her, and if she wasn't a girl I'd have slapped her ages ago.
    'My girl,' said Mum with a frown, 'please keep the doors locked. You know how I worry when you're at home on your own.'
    'Enjoy the evening and don't worry about us! Tonight belongs to you and Daddy,' Use said as they got into Dad's white Volvo. The two of us stood on the wide front veranda, waving at them until the car reached the bottom of St James Street at the station, and disappeared down Main Road. On the other side of Smitswinkel Bay, from the direction of Cape Point, the mist was sinking down the mountainside. Main Road was quiet and you couldn't hear anything except the waves breaking on the other side of the railway line.
    It was early spring. Soon the oak trees behind the house

    Mark Behr
    would turn green again, and next to the driveway Ouma Erasmus's gardenias would start making their white curly-head kids. That's what Chrisjan always used to call the white gardenia flowers: wit-katjiekrulkopkinders.
    One grows accustomed to the dust. When I opened the last of the ratpacks this morning it took just seconds before everything was covered in a layer of dust. It's useless trying to get rid of it. The radio is positioned beside me on the ground. When I turn the frequency knobs, there i the grinding sound of grains rubbing against metal. We wait for the command to move. And for food. With the food there may be mail. I stroke the leg-pocket of my browns with Mum's last letter.
    While Use was writing her big exams, Dad told us about the visitor. Because Dad knows a lot of important people in America and England it's usual for us to have big-shot guests. Dad said that this visitor was also coming from America. But not the real America. He was from South America. Dad met him last year when he visited New York. They had gotten to know each other quite well over there. Dad said that this visit had to be kept a secret, just like some of the others, and that we should just call him Mister Smith. If any of our friends asks who our visitor is, we should say he is Mister Smith who's on business here from New York. Everything considered, he shouldn't stay at our house, Dad said. But because him and Dad became friends overseas, it would only be right for us to show him our hospitality.
    'You know now that no one is supposed to know who he really is. I take it as clearly understandable,' Dad said at

    The Smell of Apples
    dinner that night, speaking in the way he does to make sure that Use and I won't ever think of telling a soul. Dad always says