by Paige Nick
‘Look properly, don’t miss anything . . . no gun, no knife? You sure?’ the driver asked.
Papsak shook his head.
‘Not bad, hey?’ said Thabo, patting the steering wheel. ‘Only ninety-seven thousand on the clock. Moe should give us more than five grand for this; it’s a major find. Five grand’s a rip-off.’
Papsak paged through the vehicle’s manual. ‘Nxaa, slow down,’ he snapped. ‘If we get pulled over, Moe will kill us slowly.’
Thabo pulled the ambulance into the back of the workshop and waited for the garage door to close all the way before he turned off the engine, and they both climbed out.
‘Check out the back,’ Thabo said.
‘Why don’t you check out the back?’ Papsak spat.
Thabo rolled his eyes at his friend, then went round to the back of the ambulance, Papsak close behind him. They hauled open the doors and both scrambled in.
‘Fok!’ Thabo shouted.
‘But . . . but . . . they weren’t driving with any sirens or lights on. How were we supposed to know there was anyone in here?’ Papsak asked.
Thabo leaned over to get a closer look at the body. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘You’ d better go get Moe.’
THE CO-AUTHORS
Wednesday 4:22am
Marco’s tummy had been gurgling and churning ever since he’d snuck in just after three that morning. He’d had a stingingly hot shower and crawled into bed as quietly as possible so as to not wake Chris. His nonna used to call those sounds tummy goblins.
He lay watching his beautiful husband breathing evenly in the bed beside him. He was so lucky: he was with this phenomenal man, he was the co-author of a successful book, with another one on the way,
he had his own restaurant, and now the man standing between him
and household-name fame was dead. The body had only just been
found and the internet was already exploding with news and rumours. He should be happy. So then why couldn’t he sleep? Was it guilt? He owed so much to the dead man.
The restaurant was half the problem. When he’d first opened the Banting Bistro, he thought it would be packed from morning till midnight. Hundreds of thousands of South Africans had embraced the Banting lifestyle, after all. But he’d learnt the hard way that it wasn’t always that simple, and running a niche restaurant was a fool’s errand. The way things were going, he had barely enough to keep the restaurant afloat for another couple of months – and only thanks to his share of the royalties from the Real Meal Revolution book – and then he was going to have to consider closing down. Unless of course, this new book of Mediterranean Banting recipes shot to the top of the bestseller lists, and him being the face of it helped turn the restaurant around. It was his only hope.
His stomach gurgled again. He gave up on sleep, snuck out of bed and tiptoed down to the kitchen.
Marco kneaded the dough by hand, the way his nonna and her nonna before her, and her nonna before her, used to back in Italy. The methods were identical; only the ingredients were different. Not eggs from the back garden, or home-milled flour, or butter from freshly milked, grass-fed, free-to-roam cows, but the local equivalents from Oranjezicht City Farm instead.
He wiped his forehead with floury fingers, getting clods of dough stuck in his thick black hair. He ignored them and went back to knead-
ing. He didn’t know of a more contemplative or therapeutic pastime. Once the dough was in the fridge, he heaved his nonna’s ancient stainless-steel pasta machine out of the cupboard and set it up on the counter, before turning on the stove to bring a pot of lightly salted
water with a splash of extra-virgin olive oil to the boil. He ran his hand over the cool steel of the pasta maker. It weighed a ton, and was as solid as a battleship. They didn’t make things like this anymore.
While Marco’s homemade pasta came to the boil, he whipped up
a basil pesto, using fresh pine kernels and leaves he had picked from
the potted basil on the windowsill, one by one.
He drained his al dente pasta into the sink, then dished up a large bowl of it, spooned in the pesto, grated in shavings off a large wedge of Parmesan, and finished it with pinches of Maldon salt, fresh parsley from another pot on the windowsill, and a couple of turns of pepper from a large wooden grinder he and Chris had received as a wedding present.
Marco settled at the kitchen counter, dug his fork into the bowl
and gave the pasta a twirl, wrapping it around his fork, and scooping
it into his mouth with the aid of a spoon, Italian-style. Once he’d finished the first bowl, he dished up a second, and then a third, and finally a fourth bowl. This time he didn’t bother sitting down; he stood beside the Smeg, dug his fork in, twirled the pasta around it and
leaned against the cool brushed-steel refrigerator, shovelling the pasta into his mouth as tears poured down his cheeks, marking trails
through the flour that dusted his face. He slid down the fridge and landed on the black-and-white chequered kitchen floor, sobbing, the half-empty bowl lying in his lap, the fresh pasta turning flabby.
Marco was crying so loudly, he didn’t hear the footsteps until Chris was bending down beside him.
‘Oh honey,’ Chris said gently, taking the bowl from him, ‘not again.’
THE FANS
Wednesday 6:09am
THE BANTING FOR LIFE FACEBOOK PAGE
Deborah Gogh
I have terrible news for all my Banting friends and fans on this page. I just read on Twitter that Professor Tim Noakes died after an attack in his home in the early hours of this morning.
Phillip Stewart Is this somce kind of joke? Because if it is its not funny.
Like 46
Melissa Giles It’s true. I went to go look on Twitter. How did he die? Does anyone know any other information or circumstances? My condolences go out to us and his family.
Like 12
Borrie Human HOW? WHAT! THIS CANT’ BE! I DONT’UNDERSTAND
Like 19
Deborah Gogh From what I can see on Twitter, the police haven’t yet released a statement. It’s such sad news. I just can’t believe it. I was reading his book only this morning, it’s become my bible.
Like 42
Margie Oosthuizen Do they know how he died?
Like 2
Murray Bruvick I hope he didn’t have a heart attack!!
Like 31
Charte Tonder That would be really bad!
Like 19
Kwela McKaiser They’re saying he was murdered and there’s some pictures of face full of blood from someone’s cell phone on the scene which is very blurry. But it hasn’t been confirmed by the authorities yet.
Like 21
Murray Bruvick Phew, as long as he didn’t have a heart attack!!
Like 19
Joanne Sloanne My condonlenses go out to his whole family. This is tragic. I feel like I’ve lost a close friend. We are praying for you all.
Like 12
Maureen Ewehout I can’t believe what I’m reading. Ever since my husband died, this group and Banting have saved me. I’ve lost more than 27 kilograms, and I feel like at the age of 60 I’ve finally found my calling and my purpose in life, thanks to The Real Meal Revolution. I’ve made so many new friends. This is the worst news I’ve heard since my husband’s passing. Tim Noakes was my very good friend. Just before he died, we worked together on some Marvellous Tim Noakes ENDORSED Real Meal Revolution Meal Plans. Get yours for just R150 each. Direct message me to find out more. It’s terrible news, but in his honour we should all dedicate ourselves to his incredible, life-changing, world-beating diet plan, with the help of my Marvellous Tim Noakes ENDORSED meal plans.
Like 8
Bernard Lewis I know me too. He’s done so much for me. Banting has changed my life. Ive also lost a whopping 24 kilograms
since January and Im speeding towards my goal wait. I’ve tried every diet known to mankind my whole life, and nothing has ever worked for me before. Without the Prof, I’d probably still literly be eating myself to death.
Like 35
Sheena Easting Hi Maureen Ewehout your diet plans does sound interesting. Are they really endorsed by the Prof himself?
Like 3
Maureen Ewehout Hello Sheena Easting yes, I met the good Professor at a Banting conference in Balito 18 months ago, and we’ve been working intensely on these meal plans together for the last four to five months. We were going to launch them soon. But with this tragic news of his death, I know he would have wanted me to launch them now, to keep his work alive. Message me if you’d like your very own Marvellous Tim Noakes ENDORSED meal plans, for just R150 each.
Like 4
Deedee Wolhutter Hey everyone, join me in a celebration of a great man’s life. Let’s each one of us light a candle tonight and put it in our windows in honour of the great professor, who has touched so many lives, and changed the way we think about food and about bacon.
Like 28
Dot Swart Hello, are candles on the green list?
Like 2
Doug Larter That has to be the most ignorant comment of the day, Dot Swart
Like 11
Dot Swart No Doug Larter, I mean that candles are made of wax, and isnt that made from bees and honey? And all Im saying is that if honey is on the Red or Orange list, then I just think that to honor the professor and all his work, and how hes changed our lives forever, then we shuddnt use them.
Like 15
Pauline Oppelt Honey is on the Orange List. You’re allowed one spoon of it a day, so I don’t know if we should do the whole candle thing or not.
Like 22
Donna Kirsch Maybe just half a candle?
Like 22
Shana Kurz Hello clever banting people ... a question about psyllium husk – do you know, can you tell me is there a difference between all the products, are some better than others ... or are all psyllium husk brands pretty much the same?
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THE WIDOW
Wednesday 7:13am
The Professor’s death had been an unfortunate necessity, Maureen Ewehout thought, as she typed her sales pitch into the Banting for Life Facebook Page and then pressed ‘post’.
Her idea was pure genius: Tim Noakes ENDORSED meal plans. Surely there would be a huge demand for them now, and of course, with him having died so unexpectedly, nobody could really question their validity, could they? It would be a ‘he said, she said’ thing, and
she could easily manufacture proof of correspondence between them
if she absolutely had to, you could do anything on the internet these days. Nobody had a signature or handwriting sample online, everybody’s voice was a standard Helvetica nine points, and it was as easy as Banting-friendly pie to recreate that.
Maureen was totally safe. Nobody would ever know that the Prof had never even heard of her. It was inspired. Her inbox was already pinging with messages from interested Banters.
She took out her laptop cleaning spray and wiped her screen and keyboard with the blue purpose-made cloth. To think that two years ago she didn’t even own a laptop, and now it was the last thing she looked at before she closed her eyes at night, and the first thing she touched when she opened them the next morning. What did the kids call it these days? FOMO, fear of missing out. She’d learnt what that was on Urban Dictionary – online of course. Maureen had FOMO: she didn’t want to miss a thing online.
But then there was a lot about her that had changed over the last couple of years. The most visible being her weight. Seventeen kilograms off in her first year of Banting, another ten in her second, and she’d plateaued at around the weight she was when she’d married Gus, thirty-eight years ago. Pity he didn’t live long enough to see the day when
at sixty, she could fit into the wedding dress she’d worn at twenty-
two. She’d pulled it out of the attic when she reached her goal weight, and it had fitted like a (slightly old-fashioned) glove.
The sad part was that if Gus were still alive today, she probably wouldn’t have ever embarked on this journey in the first place. It was the loneliness that had set the whole thing in motion, along with her only son, who’d bought her the laptop before he and his wife emigrated to New Zealand, so they could ‘stay in touch’.
First Maureen had found a couple of old friends on Facebook, and then she’d stumbled across the Banting for Life Facebook group. She’d never even heard of the lifestyle before, and at that time the group had twelve thousand members. In the time she’d been following it, membership had grown to a hundred thousand people. It felt as if almost everyone in South Africa was getting in on the action in some way or other. They were talking about Banting in the queue at the pharmacy, and even at the weekly aqua aerobics class she’d started going to down at the gym once she’d lost enough weight to be able to get into a swimming costume.
Everyone on the Banting for Life Facebook group was so friendly and encouraging. After her first few weeks of silently following the activity on the page, she’d finally built up enough courage to ‘like’ the occasional post. Eventually she had started commenting herself, and now her timeline was full of Banting chat.
At first, it was all the cheery success stories that had helped her overcome her shyness. So many people losing twenty, thirty, even forty kilograms in only a matter of months, and they all seemed to enjoy it so much, enthusiastically sharing their recipes and ideas. She could still remember her first post on the page, verbatim:
Maureen Ewehout
My late husband and I steadily put on weight over the 36 years of our marriage. After Gus died, I pretty much stopped caring altogether, and really let myself go. I recently tried to remember when last I’d seen my own feet from a standing position, but I couldn’t remember that far back, so I’ve decided to give Banting a try. I went down to Exclusive Books at Cavendish, and got the book, The Real Meal Revolution, and I’m going to give it a try. Wish me luck.
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That was nearly two years earlier, and the support had been over-
whelmingly positive and inspirational. And what a revelation the Real Meal Revolution was – it went against everything Maureen had ever believed about nutrition. In this new world, up was down and down
was up. Fat was good – whatever next?
The Professor had been a genius, and she would definitely light a candle in his honour tonight, regardless of whether honey was on the orange list or not. It was an awful shame he had to die, she thought as she hefted the knobkierie off the kitchen counter, washed it carefully
under the hot tap, dried it and put it back behind the kitchen door where it belonged. The Banting community would miss him terribly. But sadly, his death was the only way her little business would ever thrive. That’s life for you: full of sacrifices and quite bittersweet – even without any sugar in it.
THE HIJACKERS
Wednesday 7:27am
‘I didn’t ask for a body,’ Moe said. He was taller and fatter than both Thabo and Papsak. He stood behind the ambulance with his hands on his hips. His massive head was closely shaven and he had a curved pillow of fat, almost a second head, which rolled along the nape of his neck, giving his oversized bald kop something to lean on. He was not someone you wanted to mess with when he was in a good mood, and right now, having been woken and dragged from his bed far too early, he was not in a good mood.
‘I said bring me an ambulance, not bring me an ambulance and a dead body. You two skelms couldn’t organise tik in Lavender Hill.’ He sucked on his teeth and scratched his protruding belly with one finger, giving them a narrow-eyed look before reaching into his back pocket and pulling
out two wads of cash. He handed one to Papsak, and gave the other to Thabo.
Thabo flipped slowly through his wad. ‘I thought you said five large, Moe?’
‘I did,’ Moe said.
‘There’s nowhere near that much here.’
‘Two and a half for you, and two and a half for umhlobo wakho,’ Moe said, pointing at each of them and speaking slowly as if they were both dimwits. ‘That equals five. And you should consider yourselves lucky that you’re getting any of it. Look at this old skadonk and the mess you’ve made of this job. That body is going to make this ambulance hotter than Bonang. They’ll have to make an investigation, and this body’s family is going to be looking for him. So unless you want me to get another ambulance to take you two fuck-ups away in, you’d better take your body and your money and voetsek!’
‘But what are we supposed to do with the body?’ Papsak asked.
‘Not my body, not my problem,’ shrugged Moe as he turned and waddled to his office at the back of the warehouse. ‘But you’ve got twenty minutes to get yourselves and him out of here.’
THE CEO
Wednesday 7:38am
Not a day went by that Trevor didn’t wish he’d gone into bacon. People would always like bacon, wouldn’t they? Most of them, anyway. Not the Jews and Muslims of course, although some of them seemed to be coming around to it.
