Zebra Horizon

by Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

  *

  My home to be for the next few weeks was an ancient one storey house surrounded by lush flowerbeds. In the front wide steps led to a large stoep. The roof above it was supported by dark green iron pillars with brookie lace around the top. The floor of the stoep was covered in buck and zebra skins, the wall was decorated with hunting trophies and riempie chairs were standing around a large wooden table.

  Inside, the house looked like it hadn’t changed much in the last 50 years. There were oldfashioned flower patterned wallpapers on the walls and faded lampshades hung from the pressed iron ceilings. The furniture was massive and dark and the upholstery, like the carpets, a bit threadbare in places. There were bookshelves with old hardcover books, dressers with hand painted plates and an army of knick knacks and family photos. It all looked quite welcoming and cosy.

  Bertha Saida, my new host mother, was a sturdy woman in her 40s. She wore her thick blonde hair in a bun and looked like somebody who wouldn’t take any nonsense. She told me, that her 2 older kids were on holiday from boarding school and had ridden over to the neighbouring farm for the day; her husband had gone to the co-op in town to get spare parts for a tractor and to fetch 2 of their younger kids from school. As she opened the door to my room, a small boy came racing down the passage on a tricycle. “That’s our youngest son,” Bertha said. “Christo come and say hello.”

  Christo had straight black hair and dark eyes and didn’t resemble Bertha at all. He greeted me politely and then took off to the other end of the house, producing something like aeroplane noises.

  Bertha left me to unpack. My room smelled of mothballs and of the woven grass mats on the floor. I opened the 2 windows and looked across the valley. Pomegranate trees and honeysuckle bushes hedged the garden from the veld. A bit down the slope lay the veggie garden, bigger than my grandparent’s plot, which was already twice the size of my parents’ place. Friederieke’s grandfather always said that he was glad that he had been born in the last century because these days Germans couldn’t afford big pieces of land anymore; the country was getting overcrowded and running out of space.

  I saw sheep grazing in the veld and in the distance a huge krans. Except for the humming of a bee and a black woman singing in the innards of the house, it was absolutely quiet. A maid called Sannie put a jug of water and a glass on my night table and covered them with a bead-hemmed doylie. I chucked my clothes into the ancient wooden cupboard and went for a trip to the even more ancient toilet at the end of the passage. It stood on a platform and the bowl was a real splendour, with a blue flower pattern and a wooden seat, fit for the bum of an elephant.

  My new host father, Sidney Saida, was a small, slim, dark haired man with black eyes and a hooky nose. As he got out of his Land Rover, he stuck out a hairy, tanned arm and shook my hand. I first thought he was Sicilian but he told me that his family had emigrated from Lebanon 3 generations ago.

  10 year old Debbie and 7 year old Hein looked as different as 2 people possibly can. One would never have thought that they were siblings. Debbie was fair and blue eyed and her brother black haired with an olive skin. They got changed into shorts and T-shirts and we set off to have a look around.

  “First you must see Apie, “Hein said to me.

  “What’s apie?”

  The kids giggled. “Apie is not a what, he is a who.”

  We went round the house past a reservoir and a huge water tank overgrown with roses. 2 maids were cleaning shoes in the backyard. Christo and 3 small black children were playing with a handcart, all of them yelling in Sotho. Past the washing line and some lemon trees stood a tall pole with a wooden box on top. Hein whistled and something shot out of the box down the pole.

  “This is Apie,” Debbie said.

  Apie had a little black face, silvery fur and a long tail.

  “He’s a blue vervet monkey,” Hein explained. “I swapped him for my pellet gun from Frank in my class. Frank’s pa shot Apie’s mother in the bushveld and then he found the baby and brought it back.”

  Apie jumped up and down at the end of his chain making little grunting noises.

  “You can go closer, Mathilda.”

  “Doesn’t he bite?”

  “No. Wanta give him some food?” Hein pulled a greasy piece of meat out of his pocket and gave it to me. Apie pulled on his chain.

  Poor little chap being tied up like this.

  Debbie hit her brother in the ribs with her ellbow and for some reason both of them started to giggle. I had read somewhere that it is always good to talk to wild animals in captivity, so I said: “Hi Apie, hier ist was zum Fressen,” as I squatted down in front of him. Apie stuck the meat in his mouth with the speed of lightning and then, just as fast, he grabbed me between the legs, right on the you know what. I tumbled backwards flat on my bum with surprise. The kids fell around laughing. Before I had recovered, Apie was back on his pole pulling his wire.

  “He always does that with girls,” Hein panted when he got his breath back. “Pa says Apie is a randy old bastard.”

  When Debbie suggested that next thing I should meet Rommy and Juliet, I was a bit apprehensive, but Rommy and Juliet turned out to be completely harmless twin lambs. They were kept in a special paddock because their mother had died giving birth, and they had to be bottle fed. A ewe by the name of Beulah kept them company. Hein said that Beulah should be called Methusalem ‘cause she was as old as the hills, probably the oldest sheep on earth. A border collie pup called Trigger joined us and we visited the goat paddock and the poultry, which included some ostriches, and then we went to see the pigs.

  “Now the ponies,” Debbie suggested after we had seen her pet rabbits. The ponies were in a paddock between one of the big sheds and the horse stable. Hein fished some crumbly biscuits out of his pocket and gave them to Witvoet, who belonged to him, to Dudu, who belonged to Debbie and to Christo’s little Shetland pony.

  “Your brother has already got his own pony?” I was amazed. “How old is he?”

  “Oh, Christo got Jasmine for his last birthday when he turned 3.”

  2 riders approached down the blue gum avenue. Trigger wagged his tail.

  “Here come Sarie and Hummel, that’s my big sister and my big brother,” Hein announced with an important voice. “Sarie is 15 and Hummel is 14 and he got a special prize because he runs faster than anybody else in his school. It’s called sprinting.”

  “Ja, Debbie nodded. “Pa says Hummel is real Olympic material ‘xcept South Africans aren’t allowed at the Olympic games.”

  The 2 riders galopped towards us. The big dogs shot out from a shed and followed them, their ears flat and their legs moving like staccato drumsticks. The girl arrived with a 2 m lead. She patted the chestnut’s neck.

  Sarie was as dark as Hein and Hummel as fair and blue eyed as Debbie. As they dismounted, Pa Saida came out of the big shed.

  “Having a good time everybody?” He wiped his hands on his grease stained overall. “Got that bakkie fixed at last. Needed new sparkplugs and cleaning of the carburetor. Tomorrow you can take Mathilda around the place.”

  “Pa, can I learn to drive this holiday?” Hein asked. “I’ve been in school for one whole year now already and Debbie drives, and she’s only a girl.”

  “Debbie’s got longer legs than you.”

  “Ja, you can’t even reach the pedals,” Debbie said.

  “‘course I can.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Whoa whoa, kids. Hein we’ll try some time next week, all right?”

  Hein beamed. “If my legs are still not long enough we can make a plan, hey Pa. A boer always maak a plan.”

  A white bird flew up from the grass and landed on Witvoet’s back.

  “Piet,” Sarie yelled to a black man fixing a fence. “Piet, come here and take the horses.”

  Pa Saida frowned. “Sarie, a real horsewoman looks after her horse herself. I find I get the greatest pleasure out of horses when I walk them after a ride and rub them down and g
ive them back something for what they’ve given me.”

  Sarie sighed. “Ja Pa.”

  Pa Saida stroked the 2 animals on their muzzles and said: “I’m going to see how the boys are doing fixing up that workshop door.”

  As soon as he was out of earshot Sarie yelled: “Piet come here and take the horses.”

  And Piet came.

  While everybody else was doing stuff for school, for the farm or for themselves, I went for a stroll around the garden. A golden light ignited the veld and the krans. Flocks of birds returned to their nesting places, crickets chirped and some Africans sang a repetitive harmony. A lizard luxuriated on a hot rock and a caterpillar munched a lemon leaf with a soft crackling sound.

  Heidewitzka, one can hear the silence.

  Boump boump boump…a srange thud filled the air. It slowly increased in speed and noise.

  Gee, sounds like a helicopter. What’s a helicopter doing here?

  I stared my eyes out to spot the chopper – to no avail. The lizard ran down the rock and disappeared.

  I better go and find out. Mebbe it’s not a helicopter at all.Phhh, it sure makes a hell of a racket.

  On the stoep I met Hein.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “Huh? What noise?”

  “Are you deaf? That major thud there in the back.”

  “Oh that, that’s only the generator.”

  “The generator?”

  “Ja man, the generator.” He looked at me as if I was an idiot. “You know, a machine that makes electricity?”

  “Oh, can I see it?”

  Hein crinkled his nose in disbelief. “You wanta see a generator?”

  “Ja, what’s so strange about that?”

  “I’ve never met anybody who wanted to look at a generator, ‘specially not a girl.”

  “Well, I’ve only ever seen one small generator in my whole life, at the Yacht Club in V.B. Yours sounds like a much bigger one.”

  “Y’know, Ma said Germany has given the world stacks of geniusses ‘specially artists and inventors, and you don’t even know what a big generator looks like. How do they make lamps and band saws work on the farms where you come from?”

  “I guess they are all connected up to municipal electricity.”

  “Wow, not here, hey. Our closest point is 10 kilometres away. Pa says it’s too expensive to get us connected.”

  The generator turned out to be a fly wheel attached to a huge hunk of steel, stinking of burning fuel. The shed in which it was housed, vibrated with the incredible thudding it produced, and so did I.

  “Don’t tell me that thing is going to be switched on the whole night,” I shouted to Hein.

  “Only until the last one goes to bed,” Hein shouted back.

  Here go my dreams of idyllic evenings at the bosom of African nature.

  My gran from the Black Forest, who never travelled without noise protection, had given me a box of Ohropax earplugs as a farewell gift, together with a family pack of almond peach energy bars to keep up my strength on the black continent. I went straight to my room to check if I had brought those earplugs along.

  Sarie knocked at my door. “Want to listen to my records? I’ve got all the Abba. Isn’t Benny cute? I’d give anything to meet the guy.”

  Bof

  The walls of Sarie’s room were plastered with posters of singing and acting Schmalzers, mainly American, and several square metres of Abba.

  “Let’s put on Waterloo. That’s my favourite at the moment.”

  “Haven’t you got anything South African? Some Zulu group or something?”

  “No man, we don’t listen to muntu music…but let’s see…” she fiddled around in a huge pile of record. “Ah, here we go. Jeremy Taylor, that’s quite a nice one – for South Africa.” She switched on the record player and yodled in unison with the singer: “Ag pleez Deddy won’t you take us to the drive-in all all 6, 7 of us 8, 9, 10…” When she got to the refrain her brothers and sisters had joined us and the whole lot yelled loud enough to drown the noise of the generator:” Popcorn, chewing gum, peanuts and bubblegum, ice cream, candy floss and Eskimo pie, ag Deddy how we miss Nigger balls and liqorice Pepsi Cola, ginger beer and Canada Dry.”

  After a while I yelled with them, wondering what Nigger balls were, and at the end of the song we all collapsed laughing. Debbie and Hummel yanked off the mosquito net above the bed in the process.

  “You blooming mamparas,” Sarie screamed. “Can’t you pasop a bit? Now the mozzies will chomp me up all night and it’s all your fault.”

  “Serves you right,” Debbie said coldly. “It’s your punishment ‘cause you didn’t listen to Pa about looking after your horse yourself.”

  Hummel sighed. “Girls! One can fix things up, you know.”

  “Then do it,” Sarie shouted. “Do it chop chop and if…”

  An old fat maid came into the room and told everybody to calm down and to have a bath, because supper was nearly on the table and children should show some respect to their parents by not being late for meals. She grabbed Christo by the hand and said that she’d already run his bathwater, and that his toys were waiting for him.

  As they went out Sarie said to the maid: “Lorah, get Poppie to fix up that mosquito net for me”

  “Ja, Miss Sarie.”

  Miss Sarie treats the blacks like shit.

  “Don’t you say please to her?” I asked.

  Sarie threw one of these scornful looks at me. “What do you know about the blacks? I’m just adapting to their culture. There are no words for please and thank you in their language.”

  For supper we sat down in the dining room at a big yellow wood table. According to the family history, great-grandpa Saida had bartered that table for a keg of gunpowder in 1896, during the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the city of Johannesburg. This remarkable piece of furniture not only had a bullet in it, presently covered by the meat platter, but there was also a secret map on the underside. The bullet had been fired from a .45 caliber blackpowder army colt by great-uncle Ben Saida when he saw a puffadder on the table during Bertha and Sidney’s wedding in 1958. The map was thought to show the hiding place of the Kruger Millions, a treasure alledgedly hidden by the last president of the Transvaal, during the later stages of the Anglo Boer War.

  Grandpa Saida had spent years studying the map and had come to the conclusion that it showed the courtyard of a horse stable in Barberton. As soon as he was certain that the treasure was buried in a corner of the yard, probably under a tree represented by a heartshaped knothole on the map, he set out to inspect the place. On arrival he was confronted by the owner of the stable, ‘a beautiful lady’, who had recently converted to Buddhism and didn’t believe in digging up trees, especially not the Erithrina kaffria in the corner of her yard, and she believed even less in the existence of the Kruger Millions. The ‘beautiful lady’ invited grandpa Saida to a meal of steamed vegetables and boiled pulses, which made him fart all night but didn’t get him any closer to the treasure.

  “Your grandpa was a dreamer,” Ma Saida stated while dishing out a second helping of roast duck to her husband. “And Paul Kruger was a liar and a coward. A real president wouldn’t leave his country and wife in the middle of a war and hide in Switzerland like he did.”

  Pa Saida answered to this: “Give me some more spinach and rice and 2 of those roast potatoes Bertha, will you?” He took his plate and sloshed about half a litre of gravy on his food. “There are lots of other accounts about the Kruger Millions. They might have been buried all over the country by his kommandos”

  Ma Saida attacked her piece of meat with a vengeance and said: “I can tell you right now where these millions are, they are right there in Switzerland, where Oom Kruger died, in some blooming Swiss bank account.” After that she calmed down a bit. “At least we owe that traitor one good thing and that’s the Kruger National Park.”

  “Forget it,” Pa Saida said waving his fork in the air. “When it came to game, al
l old Oom Kruger was interested in was to make biltong out of it. The real pusher behind the game reserve was Loveday, the Barberton representative in the Volksraad.” Pa Saida turned to me, his fork like a weapon in front of him. “The Volksraad was the legislative of the Boer Republic, my girl. I guess they don’t teach you details about South African history in your schools in Germany.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  Ma Saida put her cutlery down and eyed her husband with a frown on her face. “Sidney, how come you know so much about Barberton representatives and stuff like that?”

  Pa Saida froze with the fork pointing to the pressed steel ceiling. “Uhm, I’ve done a bit of research about Barberton. He banged the fork on the table. “You know, the Kruger Millions are not called millions for nothing. Imagine what we could do with even half a million.” He stared dreamily at the salad platter. “We could get connected up to Escom, buy a new John Deere tractor, and you and I would go over to the King Ranch in Texas and get a bull and 2 heifers of the best beef cattle in the world.” A big sigh escaped his chest.

  Ma Saida inhaled a huge volume of air and opened her mouth to let out her reply. Pa Saida awoke abruptly from his reverie and before his wife could utter a sound, he added quickly: “And Bertha, we could also buy you a ring like the one with the diamond that you liked so much when we went up to the Rand Easter Show in Jo’burg some years ago.”

  Ma Saida exhaled gently, smiled and squeezed her husband’s hand. The kids grinned at each other.

  Over pudding, Hein enlightened me on the subject of Nigger balls. “They are sweets and they look like black marbles and they taste of liquorice, and when you suck them your tongue goes black.”

  I refused a second helping of peaches and cream and asked how Hummel got his name.

  “Oh, it’s my maiden name,” Ma Saida said. “You see, I’ve got German ancestors and in my generation there were only girls in the family and the name was going to die out, so Sidney and I decided to call our first son Hummel to keep the name going, and we pronounce it the German way: Hoomml.”

  “You mean it’s his real first name, written down in his birth certificate and everything?”

  “Ja,” Hummel nodded. “Hummel Saida; sounds good, hey?”

  For a totalitarian state they’ve got some mighty liberal laws here.

  “In Germany you could never do that. You’ve got to use proper, recognized first names for your kids.

  “The Germans, “Pa Saida stated,” tend to really push their urge for perfection.”

  I wondered if the Saida clan was aware of the fact that Hummel means bumble bee. I’d better not tell them. Hummel would never hear the end of it.

  Ma Saida called the maids, Pa Saida retired to the lounge to read the Farmers’ Weekly. Lena and Poppie came to clear the table.

  Sarie said: “Let’s go and look at the glow worms.”

  In the garden, little clouds of tiny blue and greenish lights sat along the hedge. The black shape of an owl screeched through the ink blue night and its thousand stars. Bats shot through Scorpio’s curvy tail, the Southern Cross lingered at the edge of the sky above the flat tops of the mountains. A jackal howled in the distance and the generator went boump boump boump.

  In the morning I unplugged my ears and went to check out the place.

  Pa Saida was sitting on the stoep, smoking his first cheeroot of the day. He had already flattened all the components of an English breakfast plus a bowl of mieliepap and fermented milk called inkomazi.

  The morning was so clear that one could see every single sheep on the other side of the valley. Dewdrops hung in the pomegranate trees and sparkled on every grassblade. Hummel’s bare feet left a dark trail on the lawn. He was expertly whipping a matchbox sized piece of wood across the garden.

  Pa Saida puffed a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling and said: “Hummel is getting quite good with the bullwhip. Bertha’s grandpa could hit a pea off a beerbottle with a whip. Ja, the old man was a good shot too. They called him One Shot Hans. He’d take one bullet and come back with a buck every time.”

  Sarie shuffled on to the stoep, clad in her pyjamas, her long black hair tied into a chaotic version of a ponytail. “Hi Mathilda, morning Pa,” she breathed a sleepy kiss on her father’s head.

  “Enjoying your holiday beauty sleep?” Pa Saida smiled.

  “It’s absolutely divine Pa, divine.” She grabbed a pork sausage. “And real food for human beings. That’s even more divine. I’m sick and tired of that boarding school slop.”

  “Some things never change,” Pa Saida grinned. “I haven’t met a kid yet that doesn’t complain about boarding school food.” He stomped his stompie in an ashtray. “And that includes myself when I was there.”

  Sarie slumped on a riempie chair and stuck a soupspoon into the peanut butter. She dug out about half the contents of the jar and licked the spoon with great relish. “At least you were allowed peanut butter, Pa.”

  “Why? Don’t they let you eat peanut butter at your school?” I was intrigued.

  “No ways, it’s a major sin,” Sarie answered with a full mouth.

  Now I’ve heard everything.

  “And what is so sinful about eating peanut butter?”

  “It’s only a sin for girls.”

  “Why?”

  Sarie glanced at her father and said: “It’s supposed to make girls randy.”

  This country is a colony of bloody perverts.

  “And what about the boys?” I asked.

  “Ag, I guess they don’t mind the boys getting randy,” Sarie said. “It’s part of the process of becoming a man or something.”

  “I think it’s an urban legend,” Pa Saida said. “But there are girls’ boarding schools where you won’t find peanut butter with a telescope. And your school happens to be one of them.”

  “So did you tell the head mistress of Sarie’s school you think that peanut butter story is nonsense?” I asked him.

  “No, I didn’t,” Pa Saida’s eyes flashed with a trace of annoyance, “because it’s one of the finest girls’ schools in the Freestate, run on solid Christian principles, with one of the highest matric pass rates in the country. You go there – you accept the rules. And for a good education one can do without peanut butter during the term.” Pa Saida got up. “I must go and check up on the boys. They are fixing the fence on the southern border.” He put a crumpled khaki hat on his head. “Sarie, the bakkie is filled with dieseline. What about bringing your old Pa some nice tea round about 11. I’ll be near the old windmill.”

  The track was overgrown with grass and full of potholes but that didn’t stop Sarie from putting her foot down on the accelerator. In the back of the bakkie, Christo and 2 of his little Sotho friends screamed excitedly every time we hit a bump or a hole, and in between they laughed their heads off. Hummel stood on the loading area with bent knees, like an old sailor, to compensate for the bumpiness, his hands clinging to the roof of the bakkie cabin. The airstream would have ruffled his hair if it had been longer than the 3mm he considered as the ideal summerholiday haircut. We crossed the river and drove up a hill. On top we stopped. Hummel jumped off the bakkie to open a gate.

  “I love your place,” I said to Sarie. “The wide open space…it’s beautiful.”

  “I personally like cities,” she said. “The best place I’ve ever been to is Cape Town. All the shops and movie houses! That’s where things are happening. Here it’s absolutely dead. Just imagine, the greatest events are weddings, funerals and barndances and the absolute highlight is the agricultural fair in our one horse town. Bloody boring! And our closest neighbour is miles away. You can’t even see his farm from here.”

  “Really?”

  “Ja, everything you see from here belongs to Pa…”

  Gee whiskers

  ”…and Mooiwater is only a small farm. Lots of our neighbours have much bigger ones.”

  After Christo and his pals had had a pee against a rock we set off again. Red cattle and merino sh
eep were grazing in the veld. At a dam, blesbok were drinking and the spheres of weaver birds’ nests swayed on reeds and willow branches.

  “Pa’s over there.” Sarie pointed to the left.

  I spotted a group of people close to a windmill; the wheel turning languidly on its stilty iron tower. Sarie turned the steering wheel and drove into the veld straight towards her father. The long grass brushed against the car’s underside with a swishy noise.

  “Shit,” Sarie slammed the brakes on that I almost went through the windscreen. “I nearly hit that blooming termite hill. Sjoe, one can hardly…”

  A deafening clatter hit the roof of the bakkie. It was Hummel hammering the bodywork with his fists. “Do you want me to break every bone in my body? Why do you drive like an idiot?” He slumped down into a sitting position. “Hells bells, girls should only be allowed horses and bicycles.”

  Pa Saida was supervising half a dozen labourers fixing a fence. As we approached they downed tools and watched our arrival.

  “How’s it going, Pa?” Sarie asked while she stirred 3 spoons of sugar into her father’s tea.

  “Ag, all right my girl. Sometimes I envy the guys who lived in the last century,” He gulped down half the contents of his mug. “Those were the days…not a fence in Africa. A guy could ride straight across the veld from here to Cape Town.”

  While Pa Saida returned to the fence, we went over to the windmill. I was the only one wearing shoes – my favourite bio sandals. The small boys ran as if the ground was covered with velvet instead of rocks and thistles and sharp grassblades. Hummel trod a bit more carefully and complained that townlife really buggered up a person’s feet. For once Sarie agreed with him.

  At the side of the windmill was a big concrete reservoir.

  “Look what I found,” Hummel yelled. “My raft from last year. Let’s do some boating.”

  The raft was about half the size of a single bed and made out of planks and beams held together by pieces of nylon rope. We heaved it into the water and Hummel set out for a trial run. The contraption proved to be in excellent condition only the gaps between the planks did nothing to keep the sailor dry. After a while Hummel got onto his feet and wiggled his bum in an amazing act of balance. He only fell off the raft because he laughed so much.

  “Who’s next?” he snorted. “Wanta try Mathilda?”

  “Yep.”

  I sat tailor fashion on the raft and used a plank for a paddle. The sun shone hot on my body and the water was cool and clear. Groups of butterflies danced up and down and dragonflies hovered in mid air.

  “And now the weather forecast,” Hummel announced with a radio voice. “Heavy gales are expected over the Freestate.” He jumped into the water, grabbed the raft and pushed it up and down. Everybody started screaming and laughing and I braced myself for a swim. All of a sudden Hummel’s jaw dropped, his eyes nearly popped out of his head and his body froze within a nano second.

  Heart attack? Killerbee-sting? Watersnake-bite?

  Before I could think of anything else, Hummel blushed in the most extraordinary manner.

  “Are you all right?” Sarie called, but Hummel didn’t answer.

  I followed his stare and…oy oy oy, of course, that was it. I didn’t wear panties under my shorts and Hummel’s eyes were glued right on my watchamacallit.

  Oh boy!

  Kim had told me that the guys in boys’ boarding schools spent about 90% of their time fantasizing about girls and had competitions to masturbate into boerewors skins. No wonder Hummel was confused!

  We took the 3 little guys for a spin and then we went to check on the sheep in the ‘Eastern Camp’, wet pants and all.

  Hummel followed me around like a puppy. I’d given him a bone and now it looked like I had a slave for life.

  How simple boys are.