‘The Sinners' Bench' by Maren Bodenstein

TimesLIVE

2 days ago

The Sinners' Bench weaves an artful tapestry of the arrival of German missionary families in South Africa, and the stories of succeeding generations. It is radiant with history, humour and poignancy, all captured with delightful obliquity. I have not read a family memoir with greater enjoyment. — Michael Titlestad, Professor department of English, Wits
ABOUT THE BOOK
Just before she dies, Maren Bodenstein's mother leaves her with a difficult secret and an urge to retrieve the past. After years of trawling through family archives, she realises the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of doing so. However, what Bodenstein does discover is a passionate and moving love story, which becomes the core of this book.
The Sinners' Bench uses different modes and tones to tell a story. There are extracts from letters, homespun publications, family myths and stories, childhood memories and photographs. The personal story is conveyed as memoir, which in turn is embedded in family history. This history is explored as part of the history and culture of the German Lutheran missionaries in SA.
The story is imbued with a sense of everything arising and passing. Wars are started and peace is made, people migrate and find a new home, kittens are born and drowned, new generations take centre stage and make space for the next one.
EXTRACT
The Treasure of My Mother's Sadness
It's been a while since my mother died, and her weird little sayings still pop into my head. And her hearty laughter, and the bottomless sorrow that craved constant comfort. She was so heavy. Always on a diet, then secretly eating. And then a diet again. And again. A hungry ghost, she craved to be fed. She trained Trudel and me from a young age to prepare food. Lizzy somehow escaped domestication until she married. She married such a traditional man.
Somewhere in the middle of my parents' marriage they decided to take a break from their endless squabbling and lived apart. During this time Christel grew and grew until her eyes receded into the folds of her face. At night she drank large quantities of Old Brown Sherry and phoned her children to complain about the affairs she suspected our father of having. After a year she relented and followed him to Rustenburg where they lived fairly happily together in a house with many passages. One day Christel, still very heavy, was walking her nasty French poodle on a glittering road that led to a chrome mine, and she fell. Her knees became infected and the next day they were oozing plasma.
'Is that fat coming out of your knees?' asked the tactless doctor.
Christel laughed till the tears streamed down her cheeks. The rest of the day she repeated – 'Is that fat coming out of your knees?' And laughed again.
Then she went on a strict diet, losing kilogram after kilogram. But the fat kept finding its way back onto her body.
Our mother was an adventurous eater. She was one of the first in her circle to use garlic in cooking. When a Chinese restaurant opened in Hillbrow, she immediately bought a white and blue dinner set with rice grains baked into the porcelain. She also bought a mahjong set, chopsticks and a Chinese cookbook. Her father had just died and she was spending her inheritance recklessly on furniture, crockery, new clothes, a blonde wig and a harpsichord. Guests were invited for a Chinese dinner party. My cousin and I were wrapped up in material and lipsticked to make us look like prepubescent geishas. We were to serve the food. I can't remember if the food was delicious, but the guests became drunk on sake. My cousin and I must have got hold of some and were giggling our way through the evening as our geisha garments kept slipping off our bodies.
My mother's body was soft and large. She loved five-course hotel meals, long luxurious baths and bobbing around in a warm, lazy ocean. Over the years, she persuaded our thrifty and reluctant father to travel all over Europe with her. They would return from these journeys happy and relaxed. Once, when they came back from Greece, they told us how some tout had lured them into a strip show in Athens. 'Did you know,' they said excitedly, 'that red-haired women have red pubic hair?'
My mother's sadness would often emerge at Christmas. To a German immigrant family, Christmas was an endless assertion of identity. It kicked off with exhausting hours in a hot December kitchen, baking elaborate spicy, nutty cookies, which the boys carelessly shovelled into their ever-hungry mouths. Then there were the four Sundays of Advent, marked by four candles on the cedar wreath. The night before, we would put out our shoes in the passage and decorate them with cypress foliage so that St Nicholas could come and fill them with sweets and nuts and little gifts. Like socks or a pen. On the Sundays of Advent the candles on the wreath would be lit and the family gathered to sing carols. Our mother accompanied us on the piano.
Finally, when Christmas eve arrived the lounge door would be locked so that Father Christmas and our own father could prepare the Christmas room.
Mama was always over-ambitious in her preparations, and exhausted, and her daughters would have to work extra hard to get the food ready and make things generally agreeable for her. I don't know what our brothers were up to. Around six o'clock the whole family, all spruced up, would walk up to the stone church. The brass band played, the choir sang. Sometimes there was a nativity play or a little orchestra dragged along by violins, fumbling recorders and an anxious cello. On one occasion the huge Christmas tree caught fire and one of the church elders had to quickly put out the flames, and a delicious incense of burnt pine needles filled the church.
The traditional meal was herring salad and crisp white rolls. Then came the tortuous wait for Papa to finish tweaking the Christmas room, or to wrap his presents and write little rhymes for each one. And then we had to stand around the piano again and sing more hymns. Finally the little silver bell would ring, the door opened and we walked reverently into the darkened lounge. From the candle-lit tree hung stars and lametta. The shelter made of sticks, where a carved Joseph and Mary looked at the Christ child, was illuminated by large red candles, while angels and shepherds kneeled at a respectful distance. The donkey and a sheep would make their way towards the scene of the miracle. Once more we sang, but now our eyes kept sliding towards the presents piled, away from the holy scene.
On the table was Großmutter Gertrud's tablecloth with the blue cross-stitched angels and a large plate of cookies and marzipan and uncracked nuts. And then somewhere, probably during the Bach carol, Ich Steh an Deiner Krippe Hier, Mama would choke up and we knew that Gertrud's ghost had slipped in and was luring her away. The magic would drain from the Christmas room and be replaced by a forced cheerfulness.
And every year we worked harder and harder to keep her with us. Entice her from her sadness.
Christel always surrounded herself with images of her mother. Gertrud striding down the East London high street with her friend. Caught by a street photographer, they are wearing heels and fashionable hats. In one picture the women are unaware of the photographer. When they discover him, they smile weakly.
'My mother was stylish,' our mother used to say.
What would her love have looked like?
In the last photograph taken of her, Gertrud wears a two-piece outfit with polka-dots. She looks at the camera, exhausted. She is ill already. Behind her is a large conifer from amongst whose branches her children step out like ghosts. Christel has monkey-swing plaits and wears a short dress with long socks. She looks much older than ten. Peter wears a white shirt, black shorts and shiny shoes.
But the treasure of our mother's sorrow was the Book that lay hidden in the heart of the kist – a sixty-page memoir, densely typed by Heini during his internment in Kimberley. On the now yellowing cover of the book is a stylised drawing of a mother holding her two children and, on the last page, a little blonde boy sits on a swing under a pepper tree.
The introduction reads –
For my children
Christel and Peter
With love and gratitude.
I have written these memories of your mother firstly because Christel once asked me to. Secondly, I myself have felt the need to leave you a portrait of your mother and of those times which will probably remain with you as precious loving memories. Perhaps they will also be useful to you in later life.
These memories consist of events and dates that might seem insignificant to strangers ... But to you they speak of a person, your mother, who was to us the most precious and loved one that we had. That is why these memories are meant exclusively for you and for our descendants.
I ask you to bear with the literary inadequacies and with the many other errors.
In the period I have described you, my dear children, contributed to the fulfilment of our marital happiness. Never have parents had so much joy from their children as we did. Since then fate has dealt you hard blows. And now your dear second mother is interned as well. I can only trust in providence and pray that you will be guided through and strengthened by these times of trial. May you be guided into the better future we are fighting for, and for which much blood is flowing. You too are carrying your little burden.