A Trojan Affair

by Michael Smorenburg

  “It’s not worth troubling yourself, that’s why I turned down my invitation, Andre,” Dominee Gert van der Nest assured the constable.

  It was a Saturday night, the time families traditionally gathered at one or another’s home for the men to watch their beloved rugby on television and heap meat onto the coals, while the women flocked to prepare salads and sharpen gossip.

  “You won’t hear any truth spoken there—just these rooinek foreign scientists telling their lies to politicians and politicians, making their empty promises back to them,” Gert assured.

  The last glow of dusk had evaporated, and the Milky Way was already a pale spray of diffuse light drawn overhead. Crickets had taken over the night chorus from the retired cicadas of the dayshift. With the meat cooked and consumed, the women had retired to the kitchen to clean. The younger children were in bed and the older allowed an extra treat of television.

  Kakpraathout was crackling on the hearth; the wood colloquially named for its noxious fumes that taint meat if used as coals in the cooking process. Kakpraathout—wood that made men with tumblers full of fiery liquor in their hands talk shit.

  The two men, preacher and policeman, stood contemplating, eyes cast skyward as they’d done countless times since they were lads and friends. The twinkling canopy overhead tonight was particularly crisp and clear.

  Sonja, Andre’s daughter, came outside and silently threw her arms around her father’s ample bulk, snuggling her temples against his chest. She was a tall girl and took him to the armpits.

  He held her fast and sniffed her head. An elastic band held a single ponytail and he pulled it out, releasing her thick blonde mane.

  “Pa-aaaaa!” she complained, singing her protest.

  “Go help your mother,” he told her. “This is men’s talk.”

  She snuggled deeper and held tighter.

  He nuzzled her scalp with his nose.

  “She’s a good girl,” the Dominee smiled.

  “My special girl,” her doting father assured. “Getting her a car next year when she goes to Cape Town,” he added proudly.

  “Seventeen already?” Gert asked with some amazement, he hadn’t noticed the years.

  “Almost eighteen,” she smiled at him coyly, then buried her face in her dad’s chest.

  “And you still want to follow a course on mathematics?”

  “Ja, Dominee,” she responded in muffled tones. She’d known him all her life; he had christened her into the faith.

  “She’ll teach them a thing or two,” her father assured and beamed.

  “And your boy?” asked the Dominee, “still so difficult?”

  The Dominee had not uttered Andre’s son’s name in nearly a decade since he’d married the foreign woman and become like them; he was determined to never relent.

  “So much going for him, what a loss. But, you see, Sonja… when you mix in with the wrong people…” he let the warning hang as an accusation.

  JJ, Johannes Jakob, was Sonja’s older brother by almost two decades. Not yet forty, he had already accumulated wealth that his father could barely comprehend. When he visited, it was in his own airplane or an expensive sports car that needed to be nursed over the rough country roads. His end-goal focus had him spending more on speeding tickets than on gas.

  Andre was ambivalent toward his son. Secretly proud of JJ’s achievements, he was also as deeply disappointed as the Dominee for the man’s soul. Since going to the city to study law, the prodigal had strayed from the culture, married an American and resisted all efforts to win him back. He no longer attended church and was frustratingly argumentative.

  “JJ is a good boy at heart,” Andre said, placatingly. He knew JJ’s apostasy hurt the Dominee the way any son’s rebellion hurts his spiritual father. “I’m proud of him, he must just spend more time with his people.”

  They stood silently a few minutes longer in contemplation of the heavens.

  “They want us to believe it’s getting bigger, expanding,” Andre said, jutting his chin at the sky. “Sonja comes home with these kind of stories; neh Sonja?”

  Sonja said nothing and the Dominee huffed. “Our Lord’s place is big enough, Sonja,” he assured with conviction. “There’s no end to the nonsense they tell these poor children.” After a few moments contemplation, he went on. “There’s a science centre at the school now, a new teacher with it. They’re even wasting money on this high-speed interweb.”

  Andre’s huff was weighty with despair, the burden of these sudden invasions into his quiet corner of the desert almost too much to contemplate.

  “You and I, Andre, they know our faith is strong, unbreakable; they’ll never shift us. No, they want our children.” He too shook his head with disgust at the cunning.

  “Gert,” Andre rarely used Dominee van der Nest’s first name. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “I don’t know what this world is coming to.”

  They contemplated that thought a few moments longer and Andre went on. “That black devil from your school has been riding his bike out on the national roads. I did some checking and he’s not yet eighteen—he can’t have a license. If I find him…” He let the threat go unspoken.

  “Better you find him than our Neels does hey.”

  They both chuckled in prideful agreement.

  Sonja’s body went instantly slack and she released her grip, turned and walked indoors, shoulders rounded, irritation in her attitude.

  Andre eyed her suspiciously, instinctively filing her reaction, as any good policeman should.

  “Strange,” Gert pondered aloud.

  “Strange?”

  “Strange, her reaction Andre—the way she just walked away.”

  “It’s the trouble with her and Neels,” Andre speculated hopefully, wanting to shift the course of the obvious observation. “She hasn’t wanted him at the house for weeks.”

  “Hmmm…” Gert weighed the news. “They’ve been so close a long time.”

  “Committed,” Andre confirmed. “I think she wants to break it off. Going their different ways next year, with her off to study.”

  “No… Her attitude changed when you talked about that boy, Andre. She looked very irritated.”

  “Never!” Andre said emphatically, a lance of ice thrusting within. He’d felt the truth of that conclusion convulse through her the instant the Indian boy had been mentioned. Sonja’s body had going rigid, betraying her anger, then slack as she’d released her hug. But he would never allow anyone to speculate such a disgusting thing that she’d side with a rooinek over her own kind, certainly not with a dark skinned and foreign rooinek.

  “Well…” Gert let the contradiction of his old friend’s words whither on the air to spare him the further shame of truth.

  “I’m sorry about this with Neels though. To have a son-in-law like that. But girls these days….” Andre paused to mull what might have been.

  “Ja. A special man that boy will become,” Gert agreed. “He thinks of you as a father, idolizes you my friend. I know you know it, but I don’t think you realize quite how intensively he admires you.”

  Andre knew it was true. It filled him with vast pride to have the prince of the town’s youth so enamoured of him—of him, with such a lowly rank in his police career. And, Andre thought, how miraculously and ironically his Lord worked, that his lowly rank in the police could bestow so much more untold weight to the boy’s admiration. Had he attained his ambition to follow his own father’s passion for policing to the rank of Captain and beyond, had these corrupt and undeserving black bastards not stolen that dream from him—the admiration that Neels and others with a backbone like Neels might have favoured him with would not have carried the weight it now did.

  Andre shook his head in wonder thinking about it.

  No, that it was and could only be his unshakeable belief that drew Neels to him made him burst with pride and give all honour to God for imbuing him the gift of boundless faith.

  “The father of the boy is India
n,” the Dominee changed the tack back to Dara. No need to rub Andre’s nose further in his children’s scandalous behaviour, he thought. “Another troublemaker, Andre. He’s in America now, my friends there tell me. And he’s coming here soon. I have some eyes on him, selling his ungodly books there… what kind of trubbbbble will he make when he gets here?” He was insinuating a challenge. “This family Andre… duiwel besete.”

  “What do these people want with us, Gert? There’s going to be trouble, you’re right, they keep looking for it; they just won’t stop. This is our land and our town. Every street in this town the name of our Dominees—Alheit, Sterrenberg and Stremme…” Kruger listed them. “This wouldn’t be a town and there would be nothing but bush if it wasn’t for the mission and the church. We didn’t just proclaim the gospel, our forefathers built this place.”

  “But they think it’s theirs, Andre. Just listen to the name, ‘Carnarvon’. That’s a bliksemse Engels naam. They must always change to bloody English names,” Gert pointed out. “Yes, we named the streets, but they stole the whole town and called it theirs, now they bring these verdomde people.”

  And it was true—the village's original name, Harmsfontein, was changed to Carnarvon to honour the British colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon. Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, studied for his BA degree at the University of Oxford and became Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1858 and State Secretary in 1866.

  They looked heavenward again, askance.

  “They say they’re here for the quiet of our little piece of heaven on earth, because there is no radio pollution to interfere with their listening to the sky. What a joke; these scientists must come and disrupt our simple world to escape the radio pollution as they call it, pollution they themselves have made. I’m telling you, it’s ridiculous is what it is.” Andre’s voice was strained with frustration.

  “This is the devil at work,” the Dominee solemnly confirmed, “…and it’s God allowing us to be tested. A test so we can show our mettle. We will overcome.”

  Both men huffed in unison. They were of one mind in how they’d meet the test.

  Chapter 7

  “We’re in the headlines,” said Dr. Deon Louw, school principle and NG church elder, “but for all the wrong reasons.”

  It was Monday, mid-morning, the second to last week of school for the year.

  “Luister hier,” and he began to read off a printed sheet stapled at its corner:

  “Dust swirls as reed-thin children file into a marquee erected on the sports field of Carnarvon School to attend a community imbizo, a gathering to discuss the SKA radio telescope that is being built on a remote site 80 km from their town.”

  “Waar kry jy dit?” van der Nest asked of its origins with a scowl.

  “One of the parents brought it in; their boy found it on the computer. It says here ‘BDlive’—some kind of interweb newspaper, for Business Day—the heading is ‘Carnarvon’s poor place their hopes in the SKA project’.”

  “I will tell the children to look out for this sort of thing and report it to me,” Dominee Gert assured.

  Deon read on, “‘Whether their presence is motivated by genuine curiosity for the project or the prospect of a free meal, is hard to tell.

  “‘While the SKA project is intended to provide astronomers with the world’s most powerful radio telescope, not fix a broken town, scientists and engineers responsible for implementing it have also to manage community expectations. It is a delicate task, one they are trying to manage head-on.’”

  “Wat ‘n klomp twak!” Gert spat out his rebuke against the article; Deon kept reading.

  “‘The telescope will span Africa and Australia, with its core in the remote reaches of South Africa’s Karoo. The world’s most powerful radio telescope will help scientists to answer questions about how the first stars and galaxies formed and probe the nature of dark matter…’ And on and on it goes…” Deon pushed his glasses back up his nose; his glasses always slid down when he was irritable. He read on, “‘Inside the tent, hopes run high that the telescope will provide an escape from a life of grinding poverty—people complain freely to the gathered dignitaries…’”

  The secretary came into the room to clear the teacups.

  “Dankie Trudy.”

  “Plesier,” she said.

  Deon ran his finger down the printout, his lips murmuring, seeking something provocative to recount. “‘It’s barely noon yet plenty of the locals gathered in the marquee have clearly had more than a few drinks. Many children carry the mark of foetal alcohol syndrome…’”

  “That’s how these people are, but somehow we are to blame, neh?”

  “Ja…” Deon held his finger on the page, keeping the place where he’d stopped reading. “‘Outside the school grounds lies a town with a single general practitioner and a barely functioning hospital that does not even have hot water, never mind a doctor.’”

  “What? A single practitioner!” Gert frowned, looking deeply offended. “How old is this report?”

  “Now… from this weekend.” Deon re-checked the date on it.

  “Well, there you are,” he announced with a dismissive wave. “Our new clinic just opened, so what kak are they saying, ‘a single general practitioner’.”

  “Ja… exactly. Like the rest of it—rubbish. And you know it’s Andre’s boy who put the money up? For the clinic,” Deon asserted.

  “Really?” Gert was genuinely surprised.

  “Ja.”

  “He never said anything to me.”

  “I’m sure, he’s quite embarrassed by it. Says that if his boy could put this kind of money in, why only do it when the foreigners are here? Why donate it through them? Why did he wait all this time?”

  “I agree with him. That boy, Deon; I know it has cut Andre deeply… the disappointment.”

  “I feel for him. And Sonja? She’s under their influence too. With that incident, I had to remind her of her priorities; I don’t want Andre to find out what she claimed.” The principal referred to the inquest into Dara’s head injury in the corridor when Sonja had admitted that Neels had sucker punched him; her evidence ignored, and her priorities called into question. “You know that we just hired that new science teacher, that Fiske? Well… here’s what they report, ‘The schools cannot recruit science teachers into such a backwater...’ So, you tell me—dishonest with every word they print.”

  Chapter 8

  Across town, Marsha was reading the same report from the BDlive web page aloud to a visiting friend, Chris Weber.

  “‘While the SKA project cannot uplift an entire town, it is sensitive to the effect that such a big construction project has on the lives of locals, and is investing in human capital development programs that may provide a step up for some of them.

  “‘It has already provided hundreds of bursaries and scholarships to university students in mathematics, science and engineering.

  “‘Earlier this week it launched a quarter-million-dollar e-schools’ initiative with industry partners who will provide three hundred and fifty laptops and Internet access to five schools in the area. Those laptops are preloaded with mathematics and science learning resources’.”

  She stopped reading and frowned in contemplation. “They’re actually very nice people, Chris.”

  “The workers…? The poor in the article’s heading?” Chris asked.

  “No… Well yes. The workers are very nice, very charming. But the farmers, I mean, the local Afrikaners... really lovely people. Some of the old guard are particularly edgy right now. But this whole development, it is making an impact. A lot of farms are being bought up to accommodate the project and not all of them are keen sellers. They’ve got a lot of generations invested into the land and they’re feeling aggrieved and robbed of heritage.”

  “Sure… like any big civil engineering project, a dam, say, that displaces people. I’d be angry too if I were them,” Chris suggested, shrugging, “but what can
one do. The price of progress.”

  Chris Weber was a quantum physicist working at CERN’s Hadron Collider. He and Marsha had been friends for decades and, since he was in Cape Town on vacation, she’d invited him to spend some time in the hinterland.

  “This impact’s bigger than from most projects though,” Marsha pointed out. “If you’re building a dam, you flood a valley and displace a few families who get compensation. But here, it’s millions of hectares that we need to push a century back in time. You can’t live on a modern farm under the conditions we need, they lose all the conveniences of modern life, no mobile phone coverage, no engines, no planes. They can’t use those things once we’re operational. The problem’s that radio is such a slippery medium and our sensitivity to it is off the charts. We can’t even allow windmills to turn because the friction in their mechanisms interferes with us. Just that alone sets in motion a cascade of environmental impacts on the game and sheep that rely on the scarce water.”

  “Granted, but it’s a desert… what are we talking? A few dozen families, maybe a few hundred?”

  “Way more than that, because they have staff and the towns are totally reliant on the farming economy. The towns die if the farms stop working.”

  “But you’ll pick up the slack… provide employment?”

  “During construction, sure, some. But tens of thousands of jobs…? Even that’s a stretch.”

  “Why’d they take it on here then? Australia was also bidding.”

  “Rumours around town are that the original numbers were fudged. I can’t confirm it because I wasn’t on the bid committee. The farmers reckon that the bid understated the economic activity of this region.”

  “Why don’t these folks complain then,” he frowned with scepticism.

  “Depends who you talk to… they are complaining, complaining bitterly, but they say they’re not being heard. I can kinda see their point. You and I peer in as outsiders. We see a bunch of mainly-white farmers howling about losing their mobile phone signals and satellite TV, or maybe being forced to sell their farms and we think, ‘It’s in the name of progress for the betterment of all humans…’ or ‘Your apartheid past doesn’t give you the best platform to complain now about mistreatment’. Who outside of this affected community is going to listen to their gripe? We see them as the products of institutionalized bigotry, so who cares about their hardships now?”