Zebra Horizon
Page 34
*
Hummel was a different kettle of fish. He followed me like my shadow, except he was even there when it was dark. One night I woke up with someone tapping my shoulder. My knees turned into jelly, otherwise I’d probably have jumped right through the ceiling with fright. The first thought that sprang to mind was that Pa Saida had crept in on a secret visit, the bastard. I got ready to kick him in the knaters, when I heard Hummel’s voice. “Mathilda psssst; Mathilda wake up.”
“Hummel, you idiot, what d’you think you’re doing?”
“Shhhh, the others will hear you. Get up quick. I want to show you something.”
“Gee man. It’s the middle of the night. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“No, hurry up. Otherwise we’ll miss it.”
I drowsily fished my bio sandals from under the bed and put on a sweat-shirt over my night gear, which consisted of a T-shirt and boxer shorts.
“Put your hat on,” Hummel whispered.
Heiliger Bimbam, the guy’s gone mad.
“Come on Hummel, one normally doesn’t get sunstroke from moonlight.”
“Put your hat on, you’ll see better. It’s an old hunters’ trick.”
I grabbed my hat and sleepily followed Hummel through the door.
This had better be good.
Outside, the air was cool and the grass was covered in dew. The stars trembled liquidly in the sky and the half moon dipped the landscape in a silvery light. The scent of cut grass rose from the garden, small bats shot around in acrobatic circles and the crickets enveloped the world with their chirping. We walked up the slope behind the house, towards a grove of blackwattle trees. An owl hooted softly in the distance and nightjars pierced the darkness with their screeching cries. Hummel rushed like a sure footed goat along the narrow path and never slowed down a second. When we got to the grove I was totally out of breath. Hummel stalked carefully now. The seedpods of the wattles crunched underneath our feet. Hummel turned round and put his index finger up to his mouth: don’t make any noise. I could feel my heart beat in every cell of my body.
What on earth is this guy up to?
Before I could think about it any further, Hummel signalled me to stop. All of a sudden he switched his torch on and shone into the branches. 4 pairs of small red eyes gleamed in the beam of light. They belonged to a family of furry animals who looked like miniature monkeys.
“Bushbabies,” Hummel whispered. They had enormous ears and long tails and sat there like statues. After a while Hummel switched the torch off. “Come.” He set off at an amazing pace. I stumbled over roots and fallen tree trunks and nearly had my eyes pierced out by low branches. Hummel didn’t give a damn. He didn’t even look back once. We got to the edge of the grove and all of a sudden Hummel was – gone!
Hells bells, if this is supposed to be a joke it’s not funny.
I looked around to try and locate the farmhouse when a long, high pitched howl tore the night. It was answered by a similar howl, only this one sounded much closer.
Good Lordy.
I searched the horizon for that bloody host brother of mine and could not make out any trace of him. Judging by the howls, there was a whole pack of wild animals closing in on the grove. Goosebumps popped up on my arms. I stared into the night trying to work out how to get back to the house.
Ssssssssst
The hiss nearly made me jump out of my sandals.
Ssssssssssssst
My heart stopped beating. My brains still worked ‘cause I thought bird or snake?
“Ssssssssssssssssst. Mathilda!”
The little shit. Where is he? I’ll kill him.
“Up here, Mathilda.” Hummel switched on his torch for 2 seconds. He was sitting just about above me on a platform up in a tree. “Climb up the ladder.” He shone the torch down the tree trunk.
“Gotcha, hey?” Hummel grinned when I got to the top.
“Ha ha. This is the lousiest joke anybody has ever thought of.”
“I thought you’d appreciate a bit of adventure.”
We were both whispering.
“Now you can tell your friends in Germany that you were lost in the middle of the night in the African wilderness, with stacks of wild animals roaming around you.” Hummel moved over and made space for me on the platform. “You don’t have to tell them that it was only for 5 minutes and your rescuer was only 3 metres away.”
“Very funny. If you do that again I…”
Hummel put his index finger up to his lips and pointed with his other hand towards the open veld. “Here they are,” he murmured barely audible.
I scanned the slope for them, having no idea who they were. I wanted to ask Hummel but mebbe it was better to make no noise. The moon was behind us throwing the shadows of the trees on the ground. The veld stretched ahead, silvery black, without a ripple, and the moon shadows split dark, bottomless gashes into the krans. Birds screeched and the croaks of some big frogs rolled hollowly through the valley. Hummel’s eyes were glued onto something I couldn’t see. He hardly breathed; he was so absorbed in his observations. I took my hat off and screwed up my eyes. The old hunters were right. With a hat on and some of the moonlight screened out, one could see a lot more details. I was just putting my hat back on when the treetops around us exploded in raucous cries and the roar of a thousand wing beats. A cloud of guinea fowls rose into the sky…and Hummel was still staring into the veld. All of a sudden I spotted them too, not even 20 metres away.
“Jackals,” Hummel whispered.
A whole family of them was trotting through the grass. One parent in front, the other one at the back and 3 little ones in between. From up on the platform they didn’t look threatening but wild and beautiful, and when they howled again and other jackals answered from all around, it was like being transported into a different time when animals had ruled the landscape long before man arrived.
“I’m half starved,” Hummel said on the way back.
“Me too. We must have been out for hours.”
The moon was hanging far down in the sky and it was much darker than when we had set out.
“Wanta bite of this?” Hummel dug some stuff out of his pocket. “It’s Turkish Delight.” He passed me the bar.
“Hmm, that’s my favourite.”
“I know. That’s why I bought it.”
Oy oy oy pasop, Mathilda. Is that supposed to mean something beyond the choc bar level?
We strolled down the hill in companionable silence. In the back yard Cookie and Sheba, the dogs, came to greet us. We let ourselves in through the kitchen door. The genny was switched off, so Hummel lit a paraffin lamp.
“Let’s have something to drink.” He went to the gas fridge. “There is nothing like Ma’s ginger beer when one is dying of thirst.”
The lamp threw a sphere of yellow light into the room. After the starry outdoors it felt stuffy inside the house. One of the dogs was snoring at our feet under the big kitchen table.
“So how did you like it, Mathilda?”
“It was absolutely out of this world. Fantastic; really special.”
Hummel beamed.
“To see bushbabies and jackals so close,” I marvelled. “Real wild animals doing their thing in the wild, without even a fence between them and us, that was tremendous. I’ll never forget it.”
Hummel’s smile deepened. “Ja, life on a farm in Africa can be real great.” He drank his ginger beer in slow sips, pondering some thing or other. “You know Mathilda, I’ll inherit Mooiwater one day, ‘cause I’m the eldest son.”
“Good for you.” I stroked the snoring dog under the table with my foot.
“You know Mathilda, I’m only 2 years and 4 months and 22 days younger than you. I know ‘cause your birthday was on that form from the hospital.”
Heiliger Bimbam. Where is this leading to?
Hummel stared at his glass. “You know Mathilda, there’ll always be a place here for you.” He looked up. His ears were as red as strawberries. “Always.
”
Meine Güte, this little guy is making something like a proposal to me.
I smiled at him across the table. “That’s very sweet of you, Hummel. Mebbe I’ll come for a holiday every now and then.”
The corners of Hummel’s mouth dropped. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”
I know.
“Listen Hummel, it’s great to know that there is a special place waiting for me here in Africa and when I’m back in Germany it’ll really make a difference…and one day we’ll sit here and tell your wife and your 7 kids about the night we watched the jackals.”
Hummel turned out a hint of a smile. “Jaaa, mebbe…”
I went back to bed wondering what to do about Hummel. These Saida males sure were a sticky lot. Fortunately Hein and Christo were still a bit young to get involved with girls, otherwise they’d probably also be hot on my heels.
I needn’t have worried at all. The next day Ma Saida called me into the Saida parents’ bedroom. She straightened out the bed cover and cleared her throat. I stood next to a chest of drawers, wondering what this was all about. Ma Saida stretched above the headboard and wiped some non-existent dust off a print showing the Madonna and Child. She cleared her throat again. Finally she turned round and looked me in the eyes. “Mathilda, I’ve got to talk to you.”
Ja, I gathered that much. Just come to the point, Ma Saida.
She took a deep breath. “Hummel has asked me not to tell you his maths and science
marks.”
“Oh.” I waited.
“So I don’t want any of this German nonsense.”
“Huh? What have Hummel’s marks got to do with me?”
Ma Saida sighed. “He wants you to have a good impression of him. Come on my girl, you are not stupid. You know what it means when a 14 year old boy all of a sudden cleans his fingernails all the time and voluntarily washes his feet every day and uses his sister’s pimple cream…he is still so young…and you Germans are known to…uh…grow up very fast…”
Where on earth does she get her information from?
“…so just leave the boy alone.”
“You know Bertha, I haven’t got a clue what Hummel is doing with his feet and I don’t give a hoot about his fingernails. This whole thing, if there is one, is in Hummel’s head and it isn’t exactly reciprocal. He’s my host brother and that’s it.”
Ma Saida plopped into a rocking chair next to the window, relief smoothing her face. “I thought you would be reasonable, my girl, but Hummel’s head is full of nonsense. I think I must find a job for him to keep him out of your range.”
Brilliant idea, Ma Saida, it’ll make my life a lot easier.
When I heard what the job was, I felt sorry for Hummel, though. He had to help clean up the little farm graveyard. In this heat! The thermometer had climbed to 37ºC in the shade for the last 3 days, and the National Weather Bureau had announced that the heatwave would still carry on for the rest of the week.
Hummel was completely disgusted and said it was a total waste of time; there wasn’t one single Saida buried on that graveyard because they were all buried in Bloemfontein, and the Wessels, whose bones had probably all rotted away by now anyway, hadn’t even been Catholics.
Ma Saida didn’t fall for it and told her son to show more respect for the dead, Catholic or not. After all, God would under certain conditions sometimes also accept Protestants into Heaven, so there was a fair possibility that Hummel could meet up with some Wessels in his afterlife, and now was his chance to prepare for that.
I asked who those Wessels were and Ma Saida explained that they had been the previous owners of Mooiwater. They had made some money during the gold boom in the Freestate in the 1940s, had sold the farm to the great-grandparents Saida and moved on to some bigger place in the lowveld.
Sarie took me on a guided tour to the graveyard, a tranquil place at the end of the valley. A wrought iron fence and huge pine trees hemmed a small square. The gate hung lopsided on its hinges, the pathways were overgrown and about 15 gravestones were sticking out of khaki bush and veld grass. Normally the Saidas had the graveyard cleaned up on All Saints Day, but Sari said that this year they could’t do it, because the huts in the ‘black’ compound of the farm had burned down on the night of the 31st of October, and all their laborers had helped to sort out the rubble the next day. The cause of the fire had probably been hot ash somebody had chucked out of their mbaula right next to bundles of thatching grass – these blacks did’t have any brains when it came to the most basic safety precautions.
Some of the inscriptions on the gravestones had weathered away but Sarie translated the decipherable ones from Dutch into English for me.
Henrietta Wessels had died in childbirth in 1859, and Ignatius Wessels hadn’t survived his injuries from the battle of Majuba during the first Boer War. Other members of the family had succumbed to malaria and snake bites while hunting in the Limpopo valley. There was one stone commemorating Magdalena Wessels and 5 of her children, who had died in a British concentration camp in Winberg in the Freestate during the Anglo Boer War. I was surprised. I never knew that there had been concentration camps before the Second World War. Sarie showed me a row of small gravestones in remembrance of kids; none of them had survived their third year. There weren’t any blacks buried in this graveyard. Apartheid applied also to corpses.
After he had finished in the graveyard, Ma Saida found another job for Hummel. He said he had heard that in certain first world countries child labour was illegal; why wasn’t South Africa a civilized place like that? Ma Saida told him just to concentrate on painting the window frames; one day when he would take over the farm, he’d be glad that the house had been looked after.
“Gee Ma,” Hummel sighed. “D’you know how many windows this house has got? And they are all cottage pane windows. It’ll take a guy a whole year to paint that lot. Why can’t a couple of our blacks do it?”
“Because, my boy, there are certain jobs blacks can’t do properly. There would be more paint on the glass panes than on the frames. You just have to look at the painting job they did in the horse stable. Shocking. You’ll have to learn that there are things white people in this country have to do themselves if they want to keep up certain standards.” She gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Today you only work half a day anyway. After lunch we’ll get ready for the barndance.”
The dans only started at 5 pm but the preparations turned out to be a major enterprise. Petrus had made a fire in the donkey boiler like every morning, and he had been told to ferry 3 extra wheelbarrow loads of wood to be prepared for elevated demands of hot bathwater. After an early lunch, the 2 bathrooms were permanently occupied for 3 solid hours. Everybody had an all over scrub and hair wash, and Pa Saida trimmed his 3 sons’ hair to an about 2 mm stubble with an electric hairclipper. Ma Saida and the girls put rollers on their heads and spent about another hour with the hair dryer. I was only glad that with my new ‘short but very feminine’ hairstyle, there was no question of any alteration. When everybody was finished the whole house smelled of deodorant, hairspray and footpowder and Poppie and Lena came to clean up the mess.
I thought my outfit looked all right for a dress; it was blue – my favourite colour – with a round neck, a high waist and very simple. The Saida women looked all a bit too dolled up with their frills and bows and golden shoes – but to each her own.
Ma Saida inspected me critically from all angles. “Your scar is healing nicely, Mathilda. In a couple of weeks you won’t even remember that it’s there.” She made me turn and frowned. “Isn’t this dress a bit baggy? I wonder if Tannie Dalene is getting too old. Normally she only gives 5 cm extra for movement.”
I didn’t intend to let Ma Saida know that I had asked Tannie Dalene to make an exception for me, and that she had agreed to a compromise of 10 cm, after I had told her, that the latest fashion in Europe allowed for an extra 15 cm – which had always been true for dungarees from the hardware shop.
Ma Saida’s look travelled downwards and her eyes widened in shock when she came to my feet. “You don’t plan to go to the dance in these bio sandals of yours, do you?”
“Uh Bertha, under this dress nobody will notice, and anyway, the only other shoes I’ve got here are takkies and the velskoene I got at the co-op the other day.”
“Good grief, my girl. Everybody will think you need orthopedic footwear.” She sighed. “Your feet are quite big, so none of our shoes will fit you. I suppose you’ll just have to go like that.”
Sarie wanted to talk me into applying some make-up. I refused. To paint my face was all I needed; having to wear a long dress was enough for one day.
While Sarie smeared her eyelids with silvery orange, she said: “Mathilda, you don’t know how lucky you are to be light skinned and blonde. You can’t imagine what it is like in this country to have black hair and a brown skin like me.”
I thought she was exaggerating. I thought Mediterranian types were very attractive.
It took us nearly an hour to get to de la Rey’s farm gate and another 15 minutes to reach a big shed. It was built of rocks with a green corrugated iron roof and everybody called it ‘the barn’. An African was there to show us where to park amongst the other cars under the blue gums.
“Look there are Ryno and Alicia with their ma and pa,” Hein yelled as we got out of the Land Rover.
“Hardly anything left of Charlene’s boobs,” Pa Saida observed.
Figures that that is the first thing he notices about her.
Ma Saida punched him in the ribs but it was too late. The words were out. Everybody grinned except for Ma Saida, who said with a stern face that nobody was to make any remarks about Charlene Groenewald’s changed figure – she didn’t want any of her family to put their foot in it. She slammed her door shut and shot, as fast as her high heels would allow, towards Alicia and Ryno’s mom and congratulated her in a voice that could be heard half a kilometre away on her successful operation!
Can you believe it?
Because they had just come back from Germany, I had to make small talk to the Groenewalds. Pa Groenewald’s outstanding memory was that of a beer hall waitress, who had carried 3 Mass – that’s 3 full one litre mugs of beer – in each hand. He just couldn’t get over the muscle power of that slip of a lady. Ma Groenewald couldn’t get over the lekker German chocolates and the delicious Knödel and the mouthwatering cold meats. No wonder she needed her fatrolls removed every couple of years. When she got to the scrumptious cakes, I was saved by Touki, the Greek chemist.
He had a big jar of olives in his hands and 2 bottles of ouzo sticking out of the pockets of his hunting jacket. He kissed all the ladies on the cheek. He gave me the olives to carry, took the bottles out of his pockets and grinned. “Like this it looks a bit more respectable, what d’you think?” He didn’t wait for an answer and started to tell me about this real gifted sculptor called Jim Bafula he had discovered. Jim had come into the pharmacy to get some diarrhoea medication for his daughter and because he didn’t have any money, Jim had offered him this incredible bird like object, made out of wood, wire and clay. At the moment – surprise, surprise – black artists weren’t recognized in this country and didn’t get any support. Touki let off a major sneeze and put the bottles back into his pockets to wipe his nose. “Bloody hayfever, hits me every summer.” He sneezed again and greeted a family with 5 kids. The father and the 2 older sons were carrying revolvers in their belts. It nearly made me puke, especially when I noticed that they were not the only armed people around.
This is supposed to be a dance, hells bells.
Touki took the bottles out of his pockets again and said with a lower voice: “Mark my words, Mathilda. One day, and it won’t be too far in the future, the black majority will take over this country and then you’ll see what a lot of talent has been trampled into the ground; not only African talent but everybody’s because in a totalitarian state the expression of creativity is not a very valued thing, except when it matches the party line… Let’s get a drink – that’s my party line.”
In front of the barn, above an enormous bed of embers, 2 sheep were being turned on spits by 2 blacks wearing white coats over their overalls. A short white guy with silvery hair and a boep that nearly burst his shirt was in charge of the braai.
He lifted his can of Castle Lager. “Meddag Touki.”
“Hi Sarel, meet Mathilda.”
Sarel nodded in my direction. “Aangename kennis, meisie.”
I knew that the correct answer to this was ‘aangenam Oom’, but I just couldn’t bring myself to call that guy ‘Uncle’, the respectful way of greeting your male elders in Afrikaans.
“Guten Tag,” I replied.
Sarel’s face split into a pleased grin. “My magtag meisie, jy is duits jou lekker ding.”
That was a compliment. Somebody had told me that the Boere loved the Germans because of their mutual dislike of the English.
“These sheep smell bloody nice,” Touki flared his nostrils. “I happen to know what the best pieces are. So just stick around when the meat is done, Mathilda.”
Inside the barn people were sitting in a big circle on strawbales. Inside the circle about a million kids were running around. Most of the boys had already taken their shoes off. The little girls were parading in silver sandals and golden slippers. They wore long dresses with frills and bows and everyone above the age of 3 looked as if they had had curlers in their hair.
There were farm implements standing against the walls and a vehicle hoist transformed into a bar, was laden with bottles and glasses. Next to it stood several long trestle tables with food, and in between them zinc baths filled with ice and cans of beer and cooldrinks. Boeremusiek was blaring out of several loudspeakers, sounding quite similar to Bavarian folk music.
Touki put his bottles down on the bar and introduced me to Braam de la Rey, small, thin and grey, and his wife Marlou, the fattest human being I had ever seen in my life. I left Touki discussing the benefits of Entressdruppels in cases of indigestion and headed for Sarie and the Leroux siblings. I only recognized Morné, Jaco and Chandré Leroux by their incredible mops of white blond hair. The last time I had seen them, they had worn shorts and T-shirts and at the foofy slide they had been kaalgat anyway. Now they were dressed up like the rest of us. Even the babies here had fancy outfits, and they observed the tradition in the Vrystaat: pink for girls and blue for boys.
“How’s it Mathilda?” the Leroux grinned in unison. We talked about foals that had been born on their farm and the Springboks latest rugby matches. Everybody was scandalized when they realized that I didn’t have a clue about rugby rules and didn’t even know the names of the national team.
“It’s every South African boy’s dream to be a member of the Springboks,” Morné explained to me. “They are national heroes, real manne; the whole country is proud of them.”
The young white doc from the black hospital and his brother Derek, who was responsible for the music had joined us and they heartily agreed. I had my doubts that the blacks would agree with them – blacks weren’t allowed in Springbok teams – but when whites talked about ‘us South Africans’, it never included the non-white population.
I finished the mango juice Touki had organized for me. Hummel grabbed my glass. “Can I get you another drink, Mathilda?”
“Uh thanks, but I can get it for myself.”
He shot a perplexed look at me. “No no, I’ll get it for you. It’s us guys who get the drinks for the ladies.”
Heiliger Bimbam. They are at least 3 generations behind here, with their etiquette.
I knew a couple of ‘ladies’ at home, who’d have kicked him in the bum and done their own thing, but it is no use to fart against thunder, and when in Rome do as the Romans do. “I’d like a gin and tonic.”
Sarie and Chandré burst out laughing.
What the hell is so funny?
“Us youngsters, we are not allowed to have booze,”
Sarie giggled. “Just imagine Oom Braam if Hummel came along and ordered a round of gin and tonics for us.” They collapsed laughing. When Hummel got his breath back, he said with a big wink: “What about another mango juice?” And he and the doc disappeared towards the cooldrinks, digging each other in the ribs.
Derek, the disc jockey, put on a record of energetic concertina-violin boeremusiek and the dancing started in the strawbale circle. There were still stacks of kids hopping around and running on the sidelines, and in the centre a few couples performed what in the taal is known as langarm. Langarm looks like 2 cops embracing each other with their arms extended on one side, as if to direct the traffic. A few kids imitated the adults, and I grinned at some little girls sticking their bums out exactly like the ladies, who wanted to keep some distance between themselves and their partners.
“Here you are! Girls you look gorgeous.” Grandma Saida kissed us on the cheek. “Blue really suits you well, Mathilda. Brings out the colour of your eyes.” She gazed over my dress. “You should eat a bit more, my child. I’m sure you’ve lost some weight since the fitting.” She complimented Jaco on looking so grown up and Derek on his brilliant choice of music.
“When did you get here, Gran?” Sarie asked. “Pa’s been looking for you.”
“You won’t believe it. The Therons gave us a lift and their car broke down near the Zeekooivlei bridge. We had to wait for somebody to come past and the Oosthuizens picked us up. What a business! The men are organizing something to get the car going again.”
“You must be thirsty, Tannie,” Jaco said in his most gentlemanly manner. “Can I get you a drink?”
Gran Saida nodded gratefully. “Thank you, my boy. A granadilla juice would be nice. I”ll sit down there on a strawbale.” She gracefully floated away, looking like an oriental queen with her pinned-up thick, black-grey hair, her gold jewellery and a most elegant dress of deepsea green and ruby red.
Doc and Hummel came back with our juices, big grins on their faces and a couple of young guys and girls in tow. Frik was 22 and divorced already. 2 other couples, barely older than myself, proudly showed their engagement rings. I took a schluck of my juice, wondering why anybody would want to get married before the age of 20. I planned to lead a life of travel and adventure and certainly would not tie the knot before 30, if at all.
The juice had a funny taste. I sniffed at it and took another sip.
Wragtig, these guys have doped my drink.
Doc and Hummel grinned at me from one ear to the other. After Frik had finished telling us about the size of the barbel he and the guys had fished out of the Rietvlei Dam, Hummel came over and whispered: “It’s mango juice and Witblits. That’s the closest we could get to gin and tonic. Do you like it?”
“Mm, it’s quite a pleasant combo.”
Hummel grinned even more. “Doc’s got a couple of bottles in the car. Just let me know when you need some topping up.”
The dance floor filled up with couples moving their outstretched traffic cop arms up and down as if pumping water. Under a glitzy garland with Geseende Kersfees and Merry Christmas on it, a large group of women was sitting, drinking coke and rooibos tea and minding stacks of babies. On the other side of the barn the men had gathered in a cloud of cigarette smoke, beer cans and cokes in their hands. The scent of the braaing sheep floated through the air and an army of maids carried dishes to various tables, collected dirty glasses and brought more rooibos tea in huge enamelled teapots.
My host siblings and the others went outside to have a look at Frik’s ‘new’ second hand bakkie, but I wasn’t really interested. That Witblits was burning in my guts and what I wanted was some grub.
Touki was still standing at the bar, giving medical advice to a fat guy who complained about gout and poured half his glass full of brandy, before he added some coke and waddled off to join the manne in their cloud of smoke.
“Shouldn’t he stop boozing if he’s got gout?” I asked Touki.
“Of course he should but he won’t. Coke and brandy is the Afrikaaners’ national drink, and you’d easier find a virgin in Bethlehem than a Boer without brandy in his coke.” Touki sounded as if he’d had a goodly amount of his ouzo down the hatch. He passed me the olives. “Have some of those; good for girls.”
“Thanks…I don’t quite understand where the virgins and Bethlehem come in.”
“Oh, Bethlehem is a little dorpie south of here, and there the girls scream nee, nee, nee while they open their legs double fast – and I can tell you that from my own experience.” He spat out an olive pip. “Bethlehem’s claim to fame is of course that it carries the same name as the place where Jesus was born and that makes it the number one dorp in the Freestate, as one can see on the number plates.”
“How do you mean? The number plates on the cars?”
“Ja, you see, Bloemfontein is the biggest city in the province and it’s the capital. A division of the Supreme Court is there and the University of the Freestate, and the president of South Africa has got one of his residences there, so logically Bloemfontein cars should have A on their number plates, but no – Bloem only gets the B because a little one horse town is more important than all that, just because of its name.”
Touki pulled me a bit away from the bar. “You know Mathilda, I’ve got a theory about coke and brandy and Afrikaaners.”
“Oh.”
“Ja, in my opinion coke and brandy is the expression of the essence of the Afrikaaner character.”
Gee…
“You see, the Kerk says drink comes straight from the devil, and you get the real conservative Boere who never touch a dop; but, like the rest of us, the Boere are only human beings and most of them like a dop but nobody must know. So you mix coke and brandy and nobody knows what’s in your glass. It always looks like coke anyway, and everybody is happy – and that’s exactly the point.”
“Oh.”
“Ja, as long as you keep up the appearances everybody is happy. You go to church on Sunday mornings and in the afternoon you fuck the maid in the garage, where nobody can see it, and during the week you don’t forget to shout at her and treat her as a bloody Kaffir, and everybody is happy.”
“Except the maid.”
“She doesn’t count. Ja, as far as I’m concerned there are no bigger hypocrites than the Boere.” Touki let off an almighty sneeze, blew his nose and said: “Let’s dance.”
“Uh, I dunno. I don’t know these dances.”
“I’ll show you. It’s very simple.” He pulled me past the strawbales onto the dance floor. “Look here…,” he grabbed me round the waist, “this is fastrapp…quickstep…laa ladda li da ladda…simple.” For a guy who had the build of a bear, he moved with an amazing lightness. The floor was packed and the air space between the partners had been considerably reduced in most couples. With the next tune Touki threw in some Greek steps; stuff where you cross your feet and kick up your heels. The kids found that hilarious and some of them joined us, until Touki ran out of steam and collapsed laughing on a strawbale.
Suddenly the music stopped. The metallic biiing of a tsimbi resounded through the barn and everybody fell quiet. Oom Braam announced that the food was ready. I expected a rush towards the laden buffet tables but nobody moved, not even the kids.
Oom Braam cleared his voice and said: “Kom ons bid.” Everybody bowed their heads and Oom Braam proceeded into a lengthy prayer with the powerful voice of a man, who knew that he was part of God’s chosen people in Africa and nothing could go wrong. After the ‘amen’ all hell popped loose. The men stormed to the bar to top up whatever they were drinking and the ladies jogged to the buffet. There was no way of getting to the grub without doing battle, so I went outside and watched Oom Sarel and some manne disect the second sheep.
The moon had risen behind the blue gum trees, the evening star shone brightly through the latticework of a windmill tower. Orion and Sirius hung upside down in the sky. I decided to go for a walk until things had calmed down in the barn.
Strolling through the parked cars, I soon realized that I wasn’t the only one who had left the heat of the battle. Between an old Merc and a big Ford some real young teenagers were passing round a bottle and having a fabulous time. A bit further on somebody else was also having a ball. The whole bakkie was shaking with it. Through the steamed up windows I could hear an unconvincing nee, nee, nee.
Mebbe the girl is from Bethlehem.
When I walked back into the barn people were sitting on strawbales and serious eating was going on. The crowd around the buffet tables had thinned out and so had the food. A file of maids refilled the dishes and carried dirty plates away. It only took me a few minutes to get to the front line. A bulky Tannie in front of me piled a heap of meat on one plate and veggies and pap on another one. At the breadbasket she grabbed 3 rolls and said: “My man has got a good appetite. I always dish up 2 plates for him.”
I found a vacant strawbale and looked around for familiar faces. Ma and Pa Saida were chatting to the Groenewalds and my host brothers and sisters were hopping around the dance floor with Doc, the 3 Leroux and Ryno.
To my right, a very thin and very old Ouma was gnawing on a big piece of fat. To my left, an elderly man with a beard down to his chest and a plaster around one arm was sucking on a cigarette and having an animated discussion with a beer gulping guy in his 30s, who had a chubby face like a baby, except for a moustache in which the beer foam kept getting stuck. Not far away the bulky Tannie from the queue sat next to a man who was probably her husband, because he got stuck into 2 plates of food one shot. He reminded me of the Saida’s fattest sow, the one who looked like she needed a skate board under her belly to be able to move. I wondered how anybody could possibly tolerate that repulsive heap of blubber in their bed, let alone make love to him…yuk!
Touki sat down next to me. “Want some Retsina? For me it’s the most delicious wine. Here they don’t like it. They go for the sweet stuff. Late harvest…”
The wine tasted of resin, strange really, something completely novel for my taste buds. I had a couple of sips and decided it must be an acquired taste like for coffee or Eisbein and Sauerkraut.
Touki told me about the Greek island his ancestors came from. How fantastic the olives were and how incredibly sweet the grapes and about that amazing presence of centuries gone by, soaked into the landscape and locked into rocks that had once been temples and houses. “In Africa you don’t get that, but you get those extra ordinary wide open spaces here and real wild untouched nature.”
“So you were born there on the island?”
“No, my parents came from there. I was born in Tulbagh in the Cape and then I ended up in this dorp because there was no pharmacy, so it was a good place to start one, and my wife’s family owned some ground and a house here. That’s how life goes.”
“Then why do you speak with that heavy Greek accent? I mean one would expect somebody like you who’s grown up in this country and gone to local schools, to speak proper South African English. Young kids have got that gift of totally picking up a new language, even if their parents still speak Greek or whatever.”
Touki refilled our glasses and emptied his with one gulp. “You know Mathilda, living in this county with my complexion and dark and curly hair, people easily take me for a coloured. That’s not as bad as a black but it’s way below whitey. So ever since I was a little boy I emphasized my accent because as a Greek you are still white – only just – but you are white, and you can do things the blacks and coloureds can only dream of.” He poured himself some more wine and carried on. “For the Saidas it’s the same. They are white but only just. Why do you think we were invited tonight? It’s not because the Kneukelspruiters like us or we are really part of their community. It’s because half the dorp buys on credit and wants to keep good relations with us. It’s the money that does it, sad hey?”
“Ja.”
“You know that South Africa has been ruled by the Nats since 1948?”
“Ja.”
“Its official name is Nasionale Party and 99% of its members in parliament are Afrikaaners. They are the guys who put the apartheid laws on the statute books. I’m not saying that in the rest of the world people don’t get discriminated against, but nobody does it in such a…well…boorish way as the Boere. I read a very interesting theory the other day. It says that the complexity of a people’s language is an indication to this people’s stage of evolution. If you look at Afrikaans it’s completely basic. And if you apply this theory, it means that the Afrikaaners as a people are still in their nappies.”
I was speechless.
The volume of the music increased and the dance floor filled up again with langarming couples. Touki excused himself and went off to check out what had happened to the broken down car of the Therons.
Heidewitzka! I am really and truly in a strange country.
Touki speaks like a waterfront Greek to be white. Girls in the back of parked cars yell nee nee when they want more. The name of a dorp like Bethlehem means more than all the institutions of a city like Bloemfontein put together… What a privilege it is to be an exchange student – my education explosion.
Somebody tapped on my shoulder. It was Hummel with half a dozen cans in his arms. “Here we go, Mathilda, “he passed me a cider. “At the bar everybody is sufficiently pissed now to hand out booze to us youngsters.”
Most couples on the dance floor were moving closer together to what is called binnebout. One couldn’t have put a polony skin between them from their shoulders to their knees. Ouma was searching the dance floor with beady little eyes, chewing spit with her false teeth, shaking her head with disapproval. “Dis wragtig die werk van satan.” Ouma left when Derek put on Mama Thembu, a song out of Ipi Tombi, the only South African musical with a black story line and a black cast that was acceptable for most whites. Ouma said that to have to listen to monkey music was more than one could expect from a person of her age, and what was the world coming to anyway?
On the dance floor anything was ok now. Langarm, binnebout and individual improvisation. The grandparents Saida glided past us in the most strikingly elegant manner. They were by far the classiest people of the evening. The buffet tables were nearly abandoned. One lonely guy ladled left overs onto a plate.
“See that bloody shit face there?” Hummel said pointing at him.
“Ja,” I was surprised at the outburst.
“That’s Adriaan. I once threw fowlshit all over his bakkie.”
I remembered that Sarie had told me about that, and also, that nobody had ever found out why Hummel had done it.
Hummel took a big sip from his Hunter’s Gold. “Wanta know why I did it?”
Of course I did.
“That shit face Adriaan came to the farm one day to buy a suckling pig. He asked Pa for the price and then he said he wanted to talk to his boet and mebbe also get a piglet for him. So he went to his bakkie and switched his radio on. He couldn’t see me because I was round the corner of the shed, but I could hear every word he said. He told his boet the price of the piglet and then he said, ‘this Lebanese Kaffir, he won’t give it to us for less’.” Hummel was white with anger. “Then he went back to Pa to make the deal and I chucked as much shit on that bloody prick’s bakkie as I could.” Hummel finished his cider with one indignant gulp and stomped the empty can flat one shot. “Of course I didn’t get away with it. Pa thought up a major punishment for me – spending the holidays cleaning the old rondawel, mucking out stables and stuff like that. He said if I could give him one good reason why I had done it, he would think again, but I couldn’t tell my pa that somebody had called him a Lebanese Kaffir, so I had to take my punishment.”
I saw my host brother in a completely new light. “You are a total hero, Hummel.”
He grinned faintly. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely. 100 percent. I won’t tell anybody – and thank you for telling me.”
The men hadn’t managed to fix up the Therons’ car but
they finally worked out who would travel with whom. The Therons, Ma Saida, Debbie and Hummel would go with Touki, and the grandparents Saida, Sarie, Hein, Christo and I with Pa Saida.
It wasn’t midnight yet but quite a lot of people had already left. Touki said that parties in South Africa finished at a time when they would hardly have started in the Mediterranean countries. He wished us a merry Christmas because he was going to leave for Greece the next day. I was a bit sad when I climbed into the Land Rover. Touki was the nicest guy in Kneukelspruit.
The moon, high up in the sky, dipped the landscape into a mysterious sheen. The dark backs of the mountains stood stark in the boundless veld and the barren band of the road stretched straight ahead going on forever. There was not a single light hinting of a house. I felt a bit tipsy and drowsy, like in a dream. Grandpa Saida’s melodious voice floated through the car. He was talking about the Seven Wonders of the World. Gran Saida had fallen asleep on his shoulder. Christo was snoring gently, stretched out across Sarie’s and my lap. The beams of the headlights caught a stooping owl and later on a hare. Grandpa Saida was just saying something about St Paul’s visit to Ephesus, when a uniformed man appeared out of the nothing and waved us to the side of the road.
“Oh hell, a roadblock,” Pa Saida said between his teeth.
I was wide awake within the fraction of a second, because just before Pa Saida switched from bright to dim I spotted them between the blue gum trees. Goosebumps rose all over my body and although I was sitting, I could feel my legs go all wobbly.
Pa Saida wound the window down. The cop approached and said: “Engels of Afrikaans?”
“English please,” Pa Saida replied. While the cop checked the Land Rover’s license, my eyes adapted slowly to the moonlight. I felt goosebumps even on my scalp, something I had never experienced before, but then I had never seen anything comparable, except mebbe in movies. Hein opened our window and I wished he hadn’t; now the last little barrier between them and us was gone. It seemed there were hundreds of them out there – all uniformed and armed, in between the trees and around huge armoured vehicles with guns, like straight out of a nightmare.
“Your ID book please, Sir,” the cop said. He leafed slowly through it and asked Pa Saida a couple of questions. Then he scrutinized every single one of us with his torch. I felt Sarie tensing up beside me. Christo awoke from his sleep and gaped bewildered into the beam of light. I hardly dared to breathe.
What is he looking for? This is a totalitarian state. Anything can happen.
The cop wanted to see the grandparents Saida’s ID books.
I noticed 2 young soldiers, who were standing close to our window. They pierced us with a hostile, superior stare, their rifles firmly clutched in their hands.
“These Coolies are in deep shit,” the taller one said in a low voice. “They’ll all go to jail.”
The smaller one poked his colleague in the ribs. “Heere, they’ve got a wit meisie with them.”
The tall guy looked even more disgusted than before. “I hope to hell they throw the key away after they’ve locked that bunch up.”
I figured that wit meisie meant white girl, but the rest of their conversation made no sense.
The cop glanced over us again and finally gave the ID books back to Pa Saida. “All right. Move on.”
Pa Saida pulled back onto the road. For a while nobody said a word. Beyond the blue gum trees the world was limitless and silvery again.
“What was that all about?” I asked into the silence.
“A roadblock,” Grandpa Saida explained calmly. “They are looking for terrorists and illegal arms and stolen cars…”
“And that talk about coolies? Why did these 2 guys…”
Sarie snorted. “This afternoon when I told you that it’s not always easy to live with a brown skin and black hair in this country you didn’t believe me, did you?”
“I thought you were exaggerating a bit.”
Sarie made that snorty noise again. “Look around you, sister.”
It suddenly dawned on me that there were only dark members of the Saida family in the car.
“Touki mentioned tonight that people sometimes take him for a coloured,” I said. “But you don’t look like coloureds…or do you? Can coloureds have that dead straight hair? I always thought…phhh, I don’t know anymore.”
“People sometimes take us for Indians,” Gran Saida said.
“Oh, but what does that have to do with a road block?”
“Indians are not allowed to spend the night in the Freestate.”
“What?”
“Any Indian who enters the Orange Freestate must leave it before nightfall. It’s a law. If they catch Indians after dark they’ll arrest them and put them into jail.
This place is much crazier than I thought.
“But that means Indians can’t live in the Freestate.”
“Exactly,” Grandpa Saida said patiently.
“But that is totally ludicrous. How can they have a law like that?”
“You must look at it in its historical context. After the Anglo Boer War the Union of South Africa consisted of 4 provinces. Each of these provinces was quite autonomous and the Freestate Provinsiale Raad decided they didn’t want any Indians because they saw what was going on in Natal.
“Why? What was going on in Natal? I know they imported Indians to work in the sugar cane fields.”
“That’s right. And when their contracts ended these Indians stayed on and went into business and all sorts of other things, and the Freestate said: we don’t want that.”
“But what’s wrong with Indian business; aren’t the Indians supposed to be good business people?”
“Wrong question, my girl,” Grandpa Saida said. “The question you should ask is: why do the Australians try to keep their country white? Why did the Germans want to get rid of the Jews? Why were there Pogroms in Russia? Why did the Americans put the Red Indians into reservations?” He sighed. “It’s this terrible thing called xenophobia. People like to stick to their own kind. Then they know what to expect. But differences in looks and beliefs and traditions and cultures make people feel threatened.” He sighed again. “Ja, this whole issue of different cultures is a big challenge for humanity. I’m afraid mankind hasn’t progressed very much in that area.”