by John Coetzee
“Hello there, Rick.” my dad said, stroking his neatly clipped moustache with his free hand.
“Hello, Dad,” I said cautiously.
He cleared his throat and said something that stopped me dead in my tracks. “Rick, I’d like you to know that your mom and I have been talking seriously about things and that we’ve decided to take another good look at our situation. I know I did something I never should have done, Rick. But all that belongs to the past now, see, and your mom has shown what a fantastic lady she is by having forgiven me for everything.”
I saw him swallowing hard and looking gently at my mom before for a while before he was able to continue. “Your mom and I still have a lot of things to talk about and to sort out, Rick. But one thing is sure – now that I also have this new job and a steady income, now that I am able to care for my family, things are going to be quite different for the four of us. One of the first things I’m going to do is to look for a house to rent in Nelspruit so that we can all have a place we can call our own again.”
I suddenly felt totally muddled. The invisible cord in my brain was pulling me in opposite directions again. What my dad had just said was exactly what I had desperately wanted to hear for so long, but that would, of course, mean abandoning my two new friends, Sipho and Inez. And how could I do that?
“Hey, I thought you’d be jumping for joy about this, Rick,” my mom exclaimed, looking puzzled, and I noticed that my dad was looking at me with a perplexed frown on his face as well.
I swallowed a few times and, glancing from one to the other, I managed to get a few words out at last. “Gee, that … That sounds great.”
My dad smiled. “Here, Rick. Here’s something I thought you might like to have,” he said, reaching down next to him and holding a large, oblong package out towards me.
I took it from him, tore the wrapping off and gulped when I saw what was in front of me.
“Wow, Dad, a brand new laptop!”
“Well, I suppose you’re a bit too old for Dinky toys now, Rick,” he said with an impish grin.
“Gee, it must have cost you a packet, Dad!” I said, jumping up and giving him a tight hug. “It’s just what I need for getting onto the Internet to help me with my schoolwork.”
He nodded. “Yes, I reckoned that’s what you’d be needing it for, Rick, and I know you’ll use it wisely.”
Then my mom gave my dad her playful ‘kitten face’ look, as she often used to do before things had turned so bad between them. “And you’re also going to get that traffic fine of mine settled for me when you’re in Nelspruit, aren’t you, my pet? Otherwise you’ll soon have to come and visit me behind bars.”
My dad pretended to look stern. “All right, but as long as something like that never happens again, Mrs Williams.”
“I promise faithfully, Mr Williams,” she cooed.
“I’ll see what I can do for you tomorrow,” he said, leaning over and giving her a long movielike kiss that looked as if it was going to last forever.
I decided to leave the pair of them alone, quickly excused myself and went to my room to find out what software had been installed on my new laptop. I couldn’t believe it: among other things, a complete encyclopaedia, as well as the Internet and email for me to use.
But the thought of leaving Ashby and my new friends made me feel quite gloomy again. All I could do was to put up a bold front when my dad said he’d be leaving for Nelspruit that same afternoon.
Sipho sounded very disappointed when I went over to his place to give him the news. “Oh no! When will you be leaving?”
“Pretty soon, I think. “
“You must persuade your father to let you stay, Rick. I could ask my mom and dad if you could stay with us – we could have great times hanging out together and maybe doing all kinds of experiments of our own with algae. Maybe we could discover some more things that can be done with it.”
I was very tempted to accept Sipho’s offer, but after giving it some serious thought, I realised that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. How could I let my parents down when they were planning to do their best get our family together again?
Sipho tapped me on the shoulder. “Well, come on, Rick. What do you say?”
I looked him in the eye and shook my head. “Thanks for the offer, Sipho, but I really won’t be able to. But I promise I’ll come every school holiday. And now that I’ve got this laptop, we’ll be able to keep in touch by email anyway, won’t we?”
Looking very much like his dad again, he nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, I understand, bro.”
“See you later, Sipho,” I said, and after he went back into the house, I decided to take the bull by the horns right then and go and see Inez as well. It was only then that I thought about those pink slippers again. I hurried back to the cottage, put them in a plastic bag and went around the dam to the camping place, where I found her sitting bent over her study notes on the camping table.
“Oh, hello, Rick,” she said when she saw me approaching.
“Hi, Inez.”
She got up and we stood looking at each other for a few moments. Then her face suddenly lit up. “I’m glad you’ve come, Rick. I was about to go over to your place to give you some fabulous news. Antonio has just had a call on his cellphone from Sipho’s father. It seems as if at least some of those officials were impressed with Antonio’s presentation and with what your uncle said at the power station the other day. And now top management has invited Antonio to give them more details about the algae bioreactor system at the company’s headquarters next Mon-
day.”
“Wow, that sounds great, Inez!”
“You’ll have to hold thumbs with me for Antonio, because he’s going to have a tough time convincing them what the algae can do. We can only hope that Mr Oldsworth doesn’t throw a spanner in the works and spoil everything again like he did the other day.”
“He’d better not,” I agreed. Then the words just came tumbling out of my mouth. “I’m sorry, Inez, but I’ve got some bad news. I’m going to have to leave Ashby.”
“Oh no! When?”
“Probably be within the next few days,” I said and briefly told her the reason.
“Oh, I’m really very sorry, Rick,” she said, looking genuinely disappointed.
I held out the plastic bag. “I’ve been wanting to bring these back to you for so long, but I kept forgetting.”
She looked very puzzled as she drew the pair of pink slippers out of the bag and said. “They aren’t mine.”
“But… but I found them in the wardrobe where I found your earring,” I insisted.
She shook her head so vigorously that the shiny locks of her black hair tumbled from side to side over her slim shoulders. “I’ve never owned a pair of slippers like those in my life, Rick.”
I felt my face getting as hot as one of the power station’s glowing furnaces.
“There must be some other explanation then,” I managed to say, but it meant that I was back to square one about Uncle Bert’s mysterious ways.
Inez merely smiled. “Antonio’s gone to buy us some groceries and things in the village. He and I will be leaving for Johannesburg later today to get some more things he’ll need for his presentation on Monday. So I’m sorry to say, we’ll have to say goodbye right now, Rick.”
I swallowed hard, but I managed to say: “What’s your email address, Inez?”
She bent over the table and wrote it down on a piece of paper. I took it from her, and I suddenly I felt her arms folding around me. It felt heavenly, and I can honestly say that being hugged by Inez was much more enjoyable than being hugged by the python on that dramatic night at the camping place. Her “Goodbye, Rick, and good luck” kept ringing in my ears as I hopped, skipped and jumped all the way back to the cottage and, for the first time, I realised what it was like to be crazily in love.
My mind was so full of Inez that when I entered the front door, my mom had to ask me twice what I had in the plastic bag I was tr
ying to hide.
“Oh nothing, Mom,” I said casually.
Looking quite puzzled, she said: “How can nothing make a big bulge like that?”
I didn’t know what to say, because what would she think of Uncle Bert if I told her where I had found them? I wanted to keep Uncle Bert’s little secret well guarded so that I would be the only one to know about it, but my mom grabbed the packet out of my hand and, looking into it. she gave a surprised gasp.
“Oh, where did you find my slippers, Rick? They were still brand new when we visited Uncle Bert last time, and I have never even had a chance to wear them. I must have left them somewhere in the bedroom when we went back home. Thanks, Rick, I’m really glad to have them back!”
I was left speechless.
Time seemed to fly at rocket-like speed after my dad phoned to say that he had managed to rent a furnished house for us overlooking the huge, round granite hills behind Nelspruit, and that we could move in right away if my mom wanted to. Only when I went to say a last goodbye to Sipho did I at last manage to thank Mr Khumalo properly for the major part he had played in saving me from the python that night.
He smiled absent-mindedly and after thinking about it for a few moments he said: “Sure, I’ll do it for you again anytime, Rick. Take care and go well.”
For the next few days, I still felt guilty about all the suspicions I’d had conjured up about Uncle Bert for such a long time, and I wanted to clear matters up with him somehow. But every time I tried to approach him, he seemed to withdraw into his shell again like a grouchy old tortoise. And every night after he returned from his shift at the power station, I heard his old bakkie grinding its way around the dam and stopping for long stretches of time at the camping place, which made me wonder what he was up to again.
It was only on the morning of our departure that I found out what Uncle Bert had been up to during those last few nights. After my dad had loaded our suitcases in the boot of the Polo, he went up to Uncle Bert, who was standing in front of the garage. “Thanks a lot for having Maureen, Susie and Rick staying with you all this time, Bert. I really appreciate it.”
“Pleasure, Mike. And thanks for persuading me to come back to Ashby,” he added, looking rather embarrassed. “I don’t think I would have, otherwise.”
“I hope everything will go well with Antonio’s presentation on Monday,” my dad said.
“I hope so, too, Mike,” Uncle Bert said, taking some photos out of his shirt pocket. “Take a look at these. With Mr Khumalo’s permission I’ve mounted my experimental algae bioreactor next to one of the smokestacks of the power station and got it working. I’ll be listening to Antonio’s presentation to top management on Monday, and I’m going to take these pictures along to help him convince the officials – if they still have any doubts about it.”
“Stunning!” my dad said after studying the photos for a few minutes and then handing them back to Uncle Bert. “If these don’t help them to make up their minds about using this new technology, I don’t know what will.”
While my dad went to call my mom and Susie, a gust of wind blew one of the photos out of Uncle Bert’s hand, and I ran to retrieve it. Glancing at the picture before handing it back to him, I stood on one foot and then on the other, not knowing how to say what I desperately wanted to say. At last I got the words out. “Gee, Uncle Bert. Now I know what you meant when you told me when I was little, that a very valuable treasure was hidden in the dam.”
He looked at me as if he was really seeing me for the first time and, raising a bushy eyebrow, looked sharply at me. “Well, it certainly has taken you a long time to realise that, hasn’t it?”
“Well, I’m sure about it now, Uncle Bert,” I grinned sheepishly, not knowing what to say.
He waited for me to go on.
When I got my voice back, I said more seriously: “I want to know a lot more about these things. I want to become a microbiologist one day and study all about algae and everything that can be done with it to save our planet before it’s too late,” I added dramatically.
Uncle Bert patted me on the shoulder. “That’s it, my boy. If that’s what you really want to do, then go for it with everything you’ve got! Remember, thermal power stations will be with us for a long time to come – that is to say until new ways are found to produce the electric power the world cannot do without. So, in the meantime, learn everything there is to learn. Hold onto your dream like a crocodile and never let go, no matter what people might say. Okay?”
“I’ll definitely do that, Uncle Bert,” I promised.
My mom, dad and Susie came over to say goodbye to Uncle Bert and, after a round of hugs and handshakes, Susie insisted that Uncle Bert also hugged and kissed Polly and Teddy, “ ’cause they said they’re also going to get married again one day, just like I heard Daddy and Mommy saying to each other last night,” she added excitedly, and to everybody’s amusement, Uncle Bert bent down, took the two dolls from Susie and obeyed her wish.
We then got onto the long road, travelling through the countless kilometres of dead maize stalks, and drove all the way back to Mpumalanga without stopping.
Sipho, Inez and I regularly corresponded with one another after I left Ashby, but neither of them had any news of a decision about the bioreactor project. I just knew it had to be because the obnoxious Mr Oldsworth and maybe some of his buddies had torpedoed the project again, and I felt very unhappy about it. But some weeks later, while I was busy doing my Biology homework in my bedroom, an email came through from Inez. I had to read it a few times to make absolutely sure I was seeing right before printing it out on the new printer my dad had bought me for my laptop.
Dear Rick, I think you’ll be happy to know that Antonio’s presentation at the power company’s headquarters was a huge success. Members of top management came to look at the experimental bioreactor your Uncle Bert had installed at the power station and they were all very impressed with it. They were even more impressed when they saw the very first litre of oil your uncle had extracted from the harvested algae with a special centrifuge he’d made. But they were totally astounded when your uncle told them that, with a full-scale algae bioreactor system, one power station of this size could produce something like 75 million litres of biodiesel a year.
So guess what, my dear Rick! After a lot of discussion and many reports that had to be written and approved, they have decided to order an algae bioreactor system from a company in the USA that manufactures them. Your Uncle Bert will be in charge of the project when all the equipment arrives, and Antonio and I will assist him until everything runs smoothly. That, of course, means the algae will soon be dancing happily again! And needless to say, Sipho’s father is absolutely delighted about everything. He is trying to persuade Antonio and me to stay in this country for good, and we are seriously considering it.
Love, Inez.
(PS: When are you coming to visit?)
With a dreamy sigh, I sat back in my chair and, chewing the little pink rubber on the back of my pencil, I fantasised about Inez and me… harvesting huge quantities of algae on our own algae farm, close to the Ashby power station, one day… and marketing our own biofuels on a massive scale throughout the country. And in my vivid imagination I could also see my good friend, Sipho, sitting behind his shiny desk in his big office next to mine, efficiently attending to all the legal matters of the flourishing company that he, Inez and I had built up together.
The photograph and diagram of the bioreactor on which this story is based, made available to the author by Dr Isaac Berzin, founder of GreenFuel Technologies Corp., Cambridge, Mass., USA.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my sincere thanks to the following persons for their factual contributions to the content of this story:
My sister, the late Dr Joey Coetzee
Professor of Botany
UOFS, Bloemfontein
Dr Isaac Berzin
Founder of GreenFuel Technologies,
Cambridge, Mass.,
USA
Dr Inger Maier
Boston, USA
The end
Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers,
40 Heerengracht, Cape Town
© 2008 C J S Coetzee
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording, or by any other storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
First edition, first impression 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-624-04671-4
EPUB: 978-0-624-05230-2
