Tjieng Tjang Tjerries and Other Stories

by Jolyn Phillips

Want ek is lief vir jou

  Senna walks to her room. She has been waiting for Antie Liedja to leave. Antie Liedja has not managed to lay her hand on her little tin where she keeps her memories. When Antie Liedja found out that she was going to have a waatlemoentjie she took all her clothes and shoes and burnt them. ‘Now you can’t run girlie,’ she said.

  She was angry at Senna because she did not want to tell Antie Liedja who the father was. Senna couldn’t tell the secret. She didn’t want to end up like those people in her father’s story. But since waatlemoentjie, Uncle Mannie doesn’t knyp her so much anymore. Oom Mannie says Antie Liedja is just jealous because of the watermelon Senna is carrying. She is all dried up inside, she is not much of a woman anymore he told her.

  Senna goes on her knees carefully and reaches for the tin under the bed. The little tin is a bit rusted, but she likes it that way. It is like they are growing up together. Inside the tin is a pink ribbon and her father’s funeral hymn booklet with his ID picture on it. She doesn’t know how long it is going to take her to go home, but she is thinking on the way there she must pick some Kompakter flowers and some Gonna bossies to put on Pappa’s grave.

  When she looks up it is Uncle Mannie standing at the door. He has been drinking. His eyes are glassy and just looking at her. She knows what she must do, give him what he wants, it is going to be over soon.

  The Fisherman

  Andrea gets up with a sense of purpose. It is early, so early that the moon is the only thing that reflects on the calm waves. But Andrea’s mind is already active with thoughts of the harbour, the concrete bareness of it. The harbour with the dolosse that look like giant hammers, stacked on top of each other to barricade the sea from pushing forward. Those bloody seagulls that shit everywhere. The revolting smell of sea guts that she loves. How here in Gansbaai the sea is not blue as in the pictures. It is grey and when the sea is moody with cramps she builds up foam that looks like someone threw a box of OMO washing powder in the sea, so that it might push the soap suds forwards to the shore.

  Andrea has to get ready for work. She puts on her three pairs of socks first, followed by sweatpants. Then she puts on a T-shirt and a polo-neck jersey over it and finally her green oilskin dungarees and the black balaclava she knitted for today’s occasion. When she is finished, she goes to the kitchen and takes her lunchbox which used to be an ice-cream tub that read Country Fresh Vanilla Ice Cream on it. But the sticky label is now withered. Four slices of bread with margarine is all she needs. That is what her Pappa used to have in his lunch box.

  When Andrea gets to the harbour she knows she is two hours early. The boats usually come in the harbour round about eight, but she doesn’t want to miss the skipper. She is only here for one reason. She has come to ask for her father’s work and she won’t leave until he says yes. Although the smell of fish maize stings in your nose, it is a blessed smell for the men and women working at the factory and for her. Every day they wait for the early morning hoeter to sing through the streets of Blompark to wake them up to catch the can-bus so that they can go work at the fish factory. But Andrea has never wanted to work at the can factory or by the label store. Since she was very young she wanted to be a fisherman, like Pappa.

  Every day when Pappa came from the sea she waited for him on the stoep to help pull off his toboots and oil skin. He would always let her check his pockets for loose change or, if he was in a good mood, he would bring home bokkoms to be enjoyed with dry bread and a cup of coffee.

  Andrea notices a boat coming into to the harbour. She notices how the seagulls are becoming restless, swarming like fleas towards the boat. She gets up quickly. She thinks she needs to get to the skipper before those bleddie seagulls. She hurries along the pier, careful not to slip as a member of the crew jumps off the boat to tie the boat. It must have been a bad day at sea, she thinks. She can see the skipper is particularly moody today. He and his manne are busy offloading equipment and some of their personal belongings, not fish like other days. But she walks over and taps him on his shoulder.

  ‘Ja meisiekint, what do you want? I don’t want to buy fish.’

  ‘Oh no, Skipper, I am not here to sell fish. I am here to ask for my father’s job.’

  ‘Look, I don’t think there is place for you here.’

  Andrea wants to tell the skipper that she wants to be a fisherman just like her Pappa. How she has dreamt of all the sea stories Pappa told her and the people he met when they went to Mosselbaai to catch pilchards for the fish factory. When she dreamt Pappa’s stories she was one of the men at sea. She was all grown up with a beard just like Pappa’s and she had on a balaclava for the cold and toboots to match with her green oilskin just like she is wearing today. She can be like Pappa pulling in the nets through the wind and storm. She knows what a boat feels like when it is grinding through the waves. She can smoke her BB tobacco pipe and she has a strong stomach, she is used to the smell of the salt air and fish guts.

  Her Pappa took her with him every Saturday to the harbour when the fishing boats lay on their sides at anchor. She and Pappa sat on the jetty with the tyres around it and listened to the sea­gulls’ terrible singing. They sat there with their fishing string and their rooi aas and hoped for a haarder to bite or if they were lucky a red roman fish. Pappa taught her everything about fish and water. He gave her first Okapi knife and fisher’s needle to sew up the holes in the fishing nets. She was only twelve, but by then she was just as good as Pappa. She can do this job better than any of these manne still wet behind the ears calling themselves fishermen. ‘I know the sea, Skipper,’ she wants to say. ‘I know the sea, even though you are not even looking at me and acting restless, ready to leave the harbour as soon as possible.’

  ‘Look,’ says Andrea, ‘don’t tell me that the sea is no place for me. I was born here. I am made from this salt I taste on my chapped lips, and my hands have caught fish for as long as I can remember. You won’t be sorry. Pappa said I must get my sea legs that you will understand our situation. Skipper mos know about Pappa? The sugar took him pretty bad and ate his leg. The sugar took him from us last year. We are eight children. I have to wear the pants in the house now. I wouldn’t ask you for a job if my grasmasjien didn’t die on me last week. I can work for myself, no problem, but I am running out of options.’

  The skipper looks at Andrea. She can see she has his attention now. He waves away one of his men and looks uncomfortable. He begins to scratch his beard like he wants to say something but he doesn’t know how. He is going to tell me to go away. Even after everything I have told him, Andrea thinks. Better pull up your pants, girlie. This may be your last chance.

  ‘I know it is not your business. But I cannot catch enough fish to make it till the end of the week. You know with the permits and laws. Five fishes a day is not going to pay for everything,’ Andrea says, cool and calm. She is looking the skipper right in the eye now. Man to man. She will not let him ignore her or dismiss her, the way he would chase away a thieving seagull.

  ‘Yes but… child but–’ the skipper stutters.

  ‘Yes, I understand that you have never appointed someone like me. Is it my hair? I will cut it if necessary. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t in the red. I know about trying to hit blood out of a rock. I have been a deckman for Oubaas Tollie when Pappa worked for him. Pappa said you and your father are good people.’

  ‘Why don’t you work by the fish factory? This is no place for someone like you.’

  ‘Skipper, I can’t work at the fish factory. I wasn’t born to be a fish packer. You should know what it is like being called to catch fish.’

  ‘Yes but–’

  ‘I know you think that I am crazy, but just give me a chance. You will see. Didn’t you buy fish from me last week? You yourself told me that you haven’t seen such good gevlekte fish since Oom Day last vlekked fish. Well, Skipper, I am his daughter and fishing is the oldest story I know. So can I start tomorrow?’

  ‘Look, if you interrupt me one more tim
e I swear your ears will burn. I don’t mind you working for me.’ The skipper dropped his voice now so that only Andrea could hear, ‘But you have come at the wrong time. When last have you seen my boat on the water?’ Skipper was looking in the direction of his men busy talking to each other. To the skipper they seemed cheerful, but he knew that once he had spoken to this girl he was going to tell them the same thing he was about to tell her.

  ‘Runtu, my boat, is broken like your father’s leg. There is nothing I can do anymore. I am selling the boat to the owner of the fish factory and then I’m going to live with my children in Cape Town. I can’t help you, kuintjie. We are both in the same boat here. It is by God’s grace that I was out at sea today. I hoped we would be able to catch something so that I could give the men a little something as pay. But the motor cut out and we barely made it back to port. She needs a new engine, a new rudder. Wood in the stern is rotten. Her GPS doesn’t work anymore. Truth is, I can’t afford to keep her. Not with the government quotas on how much we can catch and when and what. This was Runtu’s last day at sea. I’m sorry.’

  Andrea has nothing to say. She feels like a giant wave has smashed all the oxygen from her body and now all she can do is sink sink sink. Will she drown? She watches the skipper walk over to his bakkie where his men are all inside waiting for him. They drive off and Andrea still can’t move. Those men, she thinks as the bakkie disappears past the boom and car park, like her they will have to scavenge with the seagulls tomorrow. These seagulls at this harbour have no shame, shitting everywhere like they do. They never do an honest day’s work or know what it is to have hope taken from you when there is so little hope left.

  Will I drown? Andrea thinks again, looking at the skipper’s boat. Soon to be firewood or used to take tourists out. Andrea puts down her rucksack and unzips it. She takes out some fishing line and a hook and some rooi aas that was left from yesterday and walks over to the jetty. No, she will not drown. Not today. She sits herself down and throws her line into the water.

  The Big Box

  Between Kolgans Street and Strandloper Street stood a hill. A person could almost see the entire scheme from the hill. If only old Patrys did not decide to go and build his house there and on top of that build a high and mighty wall around it. After that, that hill seemed to belong to him alone.

  People stopped going to visit after he made that hill his and also because of that heavy-tongued wife of his. She gossips about every living being in the scheme, or so the sisters at church tell me. Then there was the outside leventree. Everyone in Galjoen Scheme reckons that Patrys should ma rather have built himself a toilet inside because everyone in those days pissed outside or in a bucket that you had to Dettol and Jik to fix the smell. I mean, if he was going to show off his money, he might as well show off with an inside leventree. No one else had toilets in the scheme those days, so either he liked to piss outside or he built it for the queen.

  But that is Patrys’s trick. He worries about no one. He is very to himself. He thinks he is better than everyone. His high and mighty tricks actually started when he bought that red Toyota bakkie in 1986 and started smousing. He, that is Patrys, made lekker money and all of a sudden the children wore new clothes and shiny shoes. But no one will forget that December when he came driving down the road with a big box on his bakkie. Because Patrys was a smouser, we all expected to see his bakkie with fruits and vegetables, but that day he had a big box. He pulled into his yard. I saw him ordering his two sons around, ordering them to help, even his wife helped. They knew the neighbours were watching, but they paid no attention to the curiosity. After they loaded the big box into the house we barely saw Patrys and his family outside. Patrys made a lekker profit because people wanted to find out what was in the box, so they would take more things on the book than necessary. He wouldn’t even tell the pastor’s wife. When she asked him what contraption was on his bakkie, he replied, ‘Husse met lang ore.’

  Daleen, Patrys’s wife, and I wasn’t really friends, so I couldn’t just go to her house for a cup of tea without her knowing that I was there to fish out about what was in that box. Apparently after the big box commotion, neighbours heard voices from their house every evening at eight o’ clock when every one’s candles dimmed because in those days we mos didn’t have electricity and municipality toilets like we have today. Neighbours heard laughter and the new friends Patrys had in his house sounded like white people. The curiosity brought the entire scheme on its thorns because of the box and Patrys’s new friends that he entertained so in his house.

  One evening Magdeleen, the pastor’s wife, couldn’t take it anymore and decided to call the Boere. She called me first, of course, asking can I come over, because she thinks that Patrys has finally done it, and clips down the phone. When I got to her house she was all shakes and nerves. She told me that she heard a big bang sound from Patrys’s house and then she saw Patrys reverse with his bakkie, tyres screeching out his yard. Magdeleen said she saw it with her own eyes, from her window. ‘My nerves can’t deal with this sin. I have to call the Boere,’ Magdeleen continued.

  ‘I’m sure it is nothing, maybe he went to get help,’ I tried to assure her.

  ‘No, I think he, you know,’ she used her thumb to draw a line around her neck to indicate what Patrys might have done.

  It was about that time when Felisa Fluitjiebek came barging into the house to throw in her ten cents worth about the big bang she heard.

  ‘Now, what do you suggest we do?’ she interrupted. ‘It was that big revolver he bought. I’m telling you the sisters at church told me this. He kidnapped his family and then you know…’ Like Magdeleen just showed, she made a line with her finger on her neck from left to right.

  Felisa Fluitjiebek was making everything worse and I didn’t like her very much. Ever since she started working for Pastor she thinks the sun shines out of her.

  ‘You ladies, I’m telling you, you are chasing ghosts,’ I said again.

  But Magdeleen and Felisa Fluitjiebek wanted to hear of nothing. They were convinced Patrys committed a murder. Ai.

  ‘You ladies know g’n no one in this town has electricity, except for the Pastor and my husband of course, so maybe because of the silence, you maybe misheard the sound coming from there. Maybe Eileen let fall a pot or a baking tray,’ I continued.

  A thing you must know about the people here in the scheme is that we go to sleep early. If the day goes to sleep, we all sleep and if something interrupts it, people lose their chickens, you know, like in they go bedinges. Why would Patrys go and kill off his family? He is a suurknol but not murderer. Nee uh-uh, I thought to myself.

  Meanwhile, Felisa Fluitjiebek brought Magdaleen, now sitting in an armchair, some sugar water to calm herself.

  ‘When Pastor comes home from the meeting in Stanford he will have to pray for that family and why haven’t you called yet? Don’t just stand there with the phone,’ Magdaleen said looking at me like I was the person who mos killed someone.

  I thought to myself, what the hell, just call the damn Boere, just to prove a point to these crazy women. We waited for quite a while for the Boere to come and later on the whole town was awake. The Boere can take their own time when it comes to scheme business.

  When the Boere eventually came there, us three ladies were already standing with an oil lamp by Magdeleen’s gate while the rest of the street stood scattered in little groups anxiously waiting for the police to bring out a dead body. Because Magdeleen was so curious, she followed the young konstabeltjie to Patrys’s house. He didn’t seem to mind us walking behind him.

  He knocked and heard steps towards the door, which then opened. He took the oil lamp I was carrying and lifted it up. We saw it was Eileen. ‘Excuse me ma’am, but there were reports of a crime taking place at this address.’

  Eileen gasped with her hands over her mouth. ‘What crimes?’ she asked confused. ‘My husband has a licence for his smousing.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re the wife?’ He looke
d at me and then at Eileen. I was so embarrassed. The constable looked at her again very seriously.

  Patrys’s wife with her big owl eyes looked at the konstabeltjie nervously and began telling him everything about the bang and the people and so on. ‘There was a cowboy programme on the TV and the cowboy shot the other cowboy in his glory. But the car battery was dying and we run the TV from it so Patrys ran out the house to go get a new one so that he could keep watching the TV. You see Mr Constable-Police, sir, it is his favourite show.’ She looked at the ground and looked like she was about to cry. ‘Please don’t arrest us. I promise we will put the sound softer. We didn’t know it was illegal.’

  ‘Your TV is not illegal,’ he assured her coldly.

  The neighbours and I were shocked ash grey with what had happened. The Boere and the ambulance that came when all the commotion was done were probably dik bedonnerd too. But it happened. Nothing we could do about it.

  I remember the konstabeltjie saying to Magdeleen, ‘I should be arresting you for wasting our time.’ But surprisingly Patrys’s wife came up for us saying that it was all a misunderstanding. We could have been in the tjoekie that night, God forbid.

  Now every evening at six, half the scheme gathers at Patrys’s house on the hill. We laugh and drink coffee and watch cowboy shows and love stories on the big box.

  I nogal feel bad for thinking such bad things of Patrys and his wife. He is actually really kind and giving. Always gives me half price on the potatoes. And Magdeleen and Felisa Fluitjiebek are bosom buddies with Eileen. It’s just Eileen this and Eileen that.

  ‘She is nogal really kind and boy can she bake doughnuts,’ Felisa Fluitjiebek tells me at the Sunday church service. ‘You should come with us next time.’ She winks at me.

  ‘Ag, I don’t know Felisa. I mean, I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

  ‘Ai no Dorie, we are all human, you must have a heart like the good Lord. They are very nice people and besides you are missing out on a lot.’