PART II
The road stretched ahead like a black ribbon, dead straight for the next 30 km. There was no other car in sight. Flat topped mountains rose from the plain, each one like an island, surrounded by a sea of veld. A few blue dams shone like morsels of fallen sky. Here and there grazing sheep and lonely windmills dotted the vastness of the landscape. The only trees, mostly huge blue gums, clustered around solitary farmhouses.
Emily Bell glanced at the map book on her lap and said to her husband: “Henry dear, I think we should take the next turn off to the right. That would save us at least 50 kilometres.”
Henry, his bony hands firmly gripping the steering wheel, answered: “As you wish my dear, as you wish.”
I looked at Leonard who was sitting next to me. He shrugged his shoulders and grinned a soundless sigh. The Bells, both in their 70s, had extensively travelled all the continents of the planet. How they had ever managed Leonard and I did not know. During countless hours we had got lost so many times, I was in a daze. According to plan the Bells should drop me off at the farm Mooiwater in the Freestate. I had my doubts if we would ever get there. And I was the lucky one. Leonard, an exchange student from Michigan, was headed to Pretoria, still hundreds of kilometres further north, with Emily and Henry right to the bitter end.
The next turn off to the right was a brown red dirt road. Henry steered the white Ford without hesitation over the cattle grid. A group of guinea fowls took off with raucous warning cries. In the distance a mountain range rose rocky blue into the sky.
Leonard studied the map, pointed to the mountains and announced: “Over there is Lesotho.”
After half an hour we took a turn off into another dirt road. Red legged francolins ran out of the high grass and yellow butterflies danced above the corrugations. Henry showed a special talent for driving at the exact speed to get a maximum effect out of the corrugations to destroy the motorcar. Emily’s white curls jumped up and down and for the first time in my life I regretted that I didn’t wear a bra. I crossed my arms under my boobs. Leonard philosophically offered a round of jelly tots.
I was looking for a decent pee-spot, when all of a sudden the car skidded in a curious sort of slow motion. Henry carried on driving as if nothing had happened and we thumped along the road like a limping duck. Leonard silently shook his head and finished his packet of jelly tots.
After a while Emily said: “Henry dear, you had better stop. Something is not right.”
“As you wish my dear, as you wish.” Henry stepped on the brake and the car came to a halt.
Emily opened her lipstick and started to apply a new layer of dark pink to her mouth. Henry, Leonard and I got out.
“Flat tyre,” Leonard diagnosed.
“Oh indeed.” Henry bent down and inspected the right back wheel. “Well now, that shouldn’t’t be a problem. Leonard, you know how to work a jack, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What is happening?” Emily called from the passenger seat.
“Nothing serious. Only a flat tyre.” Henry straightened up. “Don’t worry. Our young friend will put on the spare in no time.”
Leonard grinned and winked at me.
“Uh…Henry…”
“Yes, my girl.”
“The left front tyre is also flat.”
Henry marched around the car and had a look. “Oh indeed, oh indeed. You are quite right.”
Emily opened her window. “Henry dear, put this on your head. The sun is strong today.”
“Thank you, “Henry took his white Panama hat. “I’m afraid we have a little problem. Nothing serious, of course.”
“Good to hear, “Emily closed her make up mirror with a click. “So what’s the problem?”
“We have 2 flat tyres and only one spare.”
Emily didn’t’t bat an eyelid. She looked at her watch and said: “It’s tea time. What about a nice cup of Earl Grey?” She flashed a smile at Henry. “I brought your favourite shortbread.”
We planted the sun umbrella into the red, stony ground and arranged 4 folding chairs around a folding table. Emily clipped a rose patterned tablecloth to the tabletop and got matching plastic plates and cups out of a wicker picnic basket. Henry sat down and surveyed the landscape with binoculars.
I hope to hell he can spot a farm…or something…or somebody. We haven’t seen one car since we turned off the tar road.
Emily poured the tea. “ Who would like a cucumber sandwich?”
Leonard closed the boot of the car. “I can’t find a jack in there.”
I stirred my tea and said: “I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway.”
Henry produced a sound that vaguely resembled a whistle. “Isn’t that extraordinary…brownish crown, face and foreneck, wing coverts white and brown…white belly…and the size is about right…hm…Neotis denhami?..or Neotis ludwigii?” He got up. “Where is my bird book?” 10 minutes later Henry informed us that it was definitely a Neotis ludwigii because the denhami had a grey foreneck and had more white on his wings.
After tea Emily got her embroidery out of her bag and cross stitched a dark brown deer on a green background. Henry studied his bird book and made notes in his diary.
“Mebbe we should go for a walk,” I said to Leonard. “Who knows, there might be a public phone round the next bend.”
Emily looked up from her cross stitch. “Watch out for snakes dears; when it is hot like today they like to lie in the sun.”
Except for a spectacular view over more veld and more koppies and more mountains, there was absolutely nothing around the next bend.
When we got back to the car, Emily had finished the hindquarters of the deer and Henry was sprawled across his chair, snoring softly into a hanky spread across his face.
“There is roast beef and coleslaw for lunch,” Emily said. “And strawberry tartlets for desert.”
After lunch the real drama struck. Emily ran out of burnt umber thread for the flank of her deer. Henry tried to cheer her up. First by citing Longfellow poems and then by imitating bird calls.
Nothing helped.
“I ‘m going to climb up that koppie behind us,” I said. “Can I take the binoculars along?”
“Yes you may, my girl. You might see some Ayres’ Cisticola higher up. I’m almost certain I heard their call. It goes something like: chiki pee pee pee.”
Leonard got up from his chair. “I think I’ll join you, Mathilda.”
We climbed through a fence and found something that looked like a cow track.
“Where there are cow pats there must be cattle, and where there is cattle there must be a farm,” Leonard observed. “And…”
“D’you know how big the farms are here?”
“Yeah. I guess we’ll have to spend the night in the car.”
“Mebbe somebody will pick us up before we run out of cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey tea.”
In the distance a cloud of dust rose into the sky. It moved at a regular speed across the veld. We watched it coming closer.
I stared through the binoculars. “Let’s go back, Leonard. Looks like there is a bakkie coming.”
The bakkie stopped next to our car and 2 tanned, stocky guys jumped out. They were both in their 30s and wore khaki shorts and shirts and long socks with a comb sticking out the top. The taller one’s face was hidden behind an enormous reddish moustache, a bushy beard and a broad rimmed leather hat with a band of zebra skin around it. The other guy had chubby cheeks like a baby and a cigarette between his lips.
“Meddag,” they said in unison, and the tall one asked a question that I didn’t understand. Henry answered in his best Afrikaans, which couldn’t’t have been very good because the guys changed into English. After Henry had explained our situation, they discussed the matter amongst themselves in Afrikaans. Finally baby cheeks chucked his stompie into the dust and said with a heavy accent: “There is a garrrage on the other side of the brrridge. We can drrrop you off there.”
They put the spare whee
l on and it was decided that Leonard and I would go with them. We loaded the 2 flat tyres on the bakkie.
Baby cheeks pointed at Leon. “The ou can sit in the back.” He grinned at me. “You can sit in the front with me and Marthinus.”
Dream on boetie. Only over my dead body.
I climbed over the tailgate and said: “I get carsick when there is cigarette smoke around. I’ll rather stay in the fresh air in the back here.”
We travelled at full speed, leaving a cloud of dust behind us. Leonard and I sat with our backs against the cabin. It wasn’t exactly comfortable on the bare metal, especially when we hit potholes. A few gigantic clouds sailed above the koppies and the mountains towered silently in their bluish splendour. It felt like we were the only human beings left on the planet, until we overtook a group of black women. Some of them had babies strapped to their backs and they all carried big bundles of wood on their heads. A while later we stopped in the shade of a big blue gum. The bearded guy disappeared behind the tree. Marthinus offered us some biltong and told us that Jacobus was going to drive now, and that it wasn’t very far anymore.
We came to a small brick building with a corrugated iron roof. There was a pole with the South African flag dangling in the wind and a pole across the road. A fat young man in uniform slowly rose from his chair on the stoep. He yawned and burped on his way down the steps and stared at us with a big frown.
“Hey Kerneels, hoe gaan det?” Our driver shouted.
The fat guy’s face split into a grin. “Meddag ouens.” He winked. “Gaan julle for a naughty fuck?”
Leonard and I looked at each other.
“What do you think this place is?” Leonard asked me.
“Looks like a border post but mebbe it’s a government brothel.”
Fatty leaned through the car window and chatted in Afrikaans to Marthinus and Jacobus.
“There ain’t no brothels in this country,” Leonard said. “At least no official ones. I’ve studied the subject.” He looked around. “No, this must be a border post.”
“Somebody could have told us that we are going across the border.”
“Maybe they did…in Afrikaans.”
The 3 guys in front burst out laughing.
“Shit, you don’t think they’re planning to kidnap us?” I whispered to Leon. “You know, the white slave trade. I heard that at least…”
“Relax Mathilda, they would have drugged us.”
The guys in front cracked some cans open and howled with laughter. Fatty slapped his thighs and spilled some beer in the process. All of a sudden he became serious. He pointed to us with a meaty index finger: “Julle mense het a re-entry visa nodig. Burp.”
“I didn’t bring my passport,” Leon said.
“Heiliger Bimbam, why not?” I asked.
“Because I’m not used to taking my papers along when I wanna have a tyre fixed.”
I handed my passport to Fatty. He studied the first page and said: “I had a German great-grandmother. From Telgte. The damn most God fearing woman you can imagine. Knew her bible by heart. Gave birth to 14 children and could work like a horse. A strong woman she was. A bum like a merrie. Shoulders like an ox.” His eyes travelled from my toes to the top of my head. “Looks like they don’t make them like that anymore.”
“What gaan an, Kerneels?” Jacobus shouted from behind the steering wheel. “Hurry up man. We haven’t got all day.”
“Ja nee ouens, die Amerikaner didn’t bring his paspoort I can’t let him through.”
“Come on, Kerneels. They only want to go to the garage to have their tyres fixed. They’ll come back with us.”
“Ja nee. Burp. A ou must do his duty for his country.”
“Heere,” someone growled in front. A minute later Jacobus stuck a bottle out of the window.” Take a schluck of this, broer.”
Fatty’s eyes popped open that the whites flashed in the sun. “Mampoer,” he said and dropped my passport into my lap. He unscrewed the top of the bottle and sniffed. “Witblits.” He glugged some of the transparent liquid down his throat. His face turned even redder than it already was and tears ran out of his eyes. “Heere mense, baaie lekker goed die. Leister oukie, this time I’ll let you go. But you behave yourself, boet. Ek will nie trouble he nie.”
Leonard nodded gravely. “Okay, I promise.”
As soon as we were out of Fatty’s sight Jacobus stopped the car. “Have you people got a bit of money on you?” he asked us. “That would speed up the process on the Lesotho side.”
“Ja,” I said. “It’s South African Rands. Do they accept Rands in Lesotho?”
“Heere meisie, Kaffirs accept anything as long as it is money.”
We crossed a bridge and bought our entry into Lesotho for 10 bucks each.
There hadn’t been many trees on the South African side of the border but here there were no trees at all. There were also no fences. Goats, cattle, donkeys and horses walked wherever they wanted to; lots of them on the road. Jacobus didn’t slow down one bit.
“If he carries on at that speed we’ll end up like one of those,” Leon pointed to a car wreck. “Jeez, I’ve never seen so many fucked up cars before.”
Nor had I. They were lying all over the show; in the veld that was reduced to a stubble, in the dusty riverbed and in the red scars of soil erosion. Mud huts with thatched or corrugated iron roofs stood scattered in the rolling hills. Each kraal had its own collection of rusty car wrecks. We overtook men riding small horses and women carrying water in plastic containers on their heads. Soon we came to a tiny town with some ramshackle colonial houses. We stopped at a big rectangular building that had once been white, but now flakes of paint were hanging down the walls. Above the roll-up gate one could decipher ‘Royal Garage’. Between the 2 petrol pumps a skinny dog and some goats were lying in the sun and kids were playing with the pieces of a burst tyre. Jacobus hooted. The dog blinked and the kids assembled around our car but nothing else happened. Jacobus yelled something in Sotho. After a while a man shlentered out of the garage. He wore a conical grass hat with a loop on the top. He took his time examining the tyres, looking at them from every angle, commenting in his language. At last Jacobus and he struck some kind of a deal and the man got the kids to help him roll the tyres into the garage.
“Let’s hit the dorp,” Jacobus said.
We drove down the main road, which was the only road anyway, lined with general dealer shops and a Roman Catholic chapel with a little school. On the sides of the road people were cooking on dung fires and selling everything from live fowls and other foodstuffs to plastic basins and tanned sheepskins. Roaming goats and donkeys took an interest in the wares, especially the vegetables.
The Royal Hotel was the biggest building in town. It had the Royal Off-Sales attached to it. The whole outfit was covered by a corrugated iron roof that still showed some traces of red paint. The stone walls had some major cracks, but nobody seemed to worry. A lot of windows were broken; some of them had been fixed up with pieces of cardboard. In the yard was a long queue of women and children waiting for their turn to fill their plastic drums at an outside tap.
We got out of the car and Marthinus tripped over an old can. “Fok.” He kicked the can towards the queue where it landed between a heap of plastic packets and some broken bottles.
Inside the hotel a black woman was on her knees brushing an ancient, greenish carpet. The curtains were drawn and the dark furniture did nothing to brighten up the room. Fat flies buzzed lazily and a buckled fan wobbled on the ceiling. A middle aged white man appeared behind the counter. He had yellowish hair and wore khaki pants with braces and a lilac shirt. He took a cigarette out of his mouth and greeted Jacobus and Marthinus like old friends. After they had exchanged some news he looked at us and said to them: “I see you’ve brought some new customers.” He grinned at me. “We don’t often get female clients.” Wink.
What the hell is going on here?
”Heere, no Charley.” Marthinus scratched his head
. “They are still minors, man.”
“And overseas foreigners,” Jacobus added. “I don’t want any diplomatic trouble.”
Leonard was getting nervous, checking the place from the corners of his eyes, looking for an escape route or something.
“They can wait here and have a coke,” Marthinus suggested.
“They look old enough to have a proper drink,” Charley said. “Come on guys, it’s on me.”
The hotel bar was even gloomier than the lounge. It stank of stale tobacco and booze. A billiard table stood in one corner and an ancient jukebox in the other. A black man was washing glasses in slow motion and a black woman with a baby strapped to her back was dusting the bottles on the shelves. We sat down on barstools and Charley went behind the counter. “The usual?” he asked. Jacobus and Marthinus nodded.
“And for the lady?”
“A gin and tonic, please.” I was beginning to enjoy myself. One doesn’t every day get the chance to have a drink with some weirdos in a bizarre hotel in the middle of nowhere.
“Good choice,” Charley grinned. “Stops you from getting malaria and hookworm.”
He pushed my drink across the counter and poured some brandy and coke for Jacobus and Marthinus, a whisky for himself and gave Leonard a beer. He raised his glass and asked the guys how life was treating them.
“All right man, all right,” Jacobus said. “We had good rains to plant the mielies and Rina just had the baby, another girl.”
“Hell, you Boere breed like rabbits,” Charley said. “How many kids have you got now?”
“6,” Jacobus answered proudly. “And we are going to have more. At the moment the Kaffirs are still tame but we must increase the white population to secure our future.”
“Ja,” Marthinus put his glass down. “One can’t let these savages run our Suidafrika. Just look at the rest of Africa. All fucked up.”
Charley shrugged his shoulders. “Here in Lesotho life isn’t too bad for a guy who uses his brains. At least it’s better than Glasgow where my parents came from. A hellhole of a place that – too many people and it always rains. In Africa a guy still enjoys some freedom, and Lesotho is more liberal in…uh… certain departments than South Africa.” He grinned happily. “A guy who uses his brains can make it big time here.”
Marthinus glanced at his watch. “Heere, it’s getting late. The border closes at 5 and I must go home tonight. The wife comes back from her trip with the Boerevroue Vereenigung.
”Right,” Charley poured himself some more whisky. “First the bucks and then the basadi – as always.”
5 minutes later 2 young black women came in. The fat one squeezed between Marthinus and myself.
Seems to be true that Africans need less airspace around them than a person from Europe.
There was hardly half a metre between Marthinus and myself and after 30 seconds that woman’s fat thigh cut off the circulation in my leg.
Talk about skin contact with the indigenous population…
I couldn’t move away because on my other side was the wall. My leg was feeling half dead already.
What is she doing standing here?
When I looked again, Marthinus’ hand was caressing her bum. I didn’t believe my eyes.
Hells bells, what does he think he is doing?
I scrutinized Jacobus and the thin woman and wragtig, the same thing was going on there.
These bloody hypocritical shits.
“I’m going for a walk,” I forced my way past the fat woman. “I need some fresh air.”
“You can’t go for a walk now,” Charley said. “That goddamn heat will kill you. Sit down and have another drink.”
“If you go, don’t go too far,” Marthinus said. “We’ll leave in half an hour.”
The guys walked out with the 2 black women. Charley slid another beer across to Leonard. “Don’t look so devastated, kids. What you are seeing here is called real life.”
I slumped back onto my stool.
“You can’t suppress human nature,” Charley said. “But the bloody Nats across the border can’t get that into their wooden heads. Want another gin and tonic, girl?”
I nodded.
“Good choice. Calms the nerves. I’ll make it a double.” He opened a gin bottle.
“Ja, my best customers are God-fearing Boere from Suidafrika. The kind of guys who schlepp their families to church every Sunday and believe they are God’s chosen people to tame the African wilderness and civilize the indigenous population.”
I took a sip of my drink. “What I don’t understand is that they never stop saying how lazy and dirty the ‘Kaffirs’ are and then they come here and hit it off with black girls.”
“It’s a matter of infant psychology,” Charley said.
“Huh?”
“You mustn’t forget that most of them have been brought up by black nannies, strapped to their nanny’s back…the whole tootie, so their earliest memories of well-being and security and comfort are connected to black women; and later in life, when a guy goes through a bit of a rough patch, where does he look for some cradling and comforting and all the rest of it? The black ladies. And that is one of the reasons why apartheid will never work.”
“I suppose it’s good for your…uh…business,” Leonard said.
“You hit the nail right on the head, lad,” Charley grinned.” And of course business is not only in the black girls. The Nats also prohibit gambling in their country. They got that straight out of the bible like most of their stuff. Has got something to do with ‘you must earn your bucks by the sweat of your brow’, whatever that is supposed to mean. Haven’t seen many guys who don’t work up a goodly lot of sweat at the gambling table.” He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. “If you want to enjoy a good game you come back on a Friday or Saturday, that’s when things are happening here. Last week-end the boss of the cop shop across the border took home 2000 Rand.”
When we got back to the garage, the man with the grass hat had repaired one tyre and just started on the other one.
“Fokin’ lazy Kaffir,” Marthinus growled. He looked at his watch. “We can’t wait now, it’s quarter to 5. Hurry up man, load these things fast.”
At the border we got just waved through. The landscape glowed as if someone had switched on a sub-terranian light. Our dust cloud sparkled golden, a flight of white ibises moved like a shining arrow across the deep blue sky. Even the shadows had colours.
Henry and Emily were sitting exactly as we had left them. They invited Marthinus and Jacobus for a cup of tea and thanked them over and over again. The guys declined the invitation and said that the whites in Africa wouldn’t be where they are now if they hadn’t helped each other since the time of the first settlers. They quickly put the tyre on and left in a big hurry because Marthinus had to fetch his wife.
We packed everything and hit the road again. The Bells were in excellent spirits. Emily because she had found a spare reel of burnt umber and had finished the flank of her cross stitch deer, and Henry because he had spotted ‘a fine Ayres’ Cisticola’.
They didn’t want to travel in the dark – which I thought was a good idea, because already in bright daylight they got lost all the time – so we slept in the Arendsnes Hotel in a little one horse town. Emily and I shared a room and Henry and Leonard another one because Leonard and I were still minors and shouldn’t be exposed to temptation.
Zebra Horizon Page 25