A Trojan Affair

by Michael Smorenburg

  Karel’s face imploded into delighted wrinkles again and he cooed and swooned—it was sure to be tobacco. “Ooh… I hope it is very special,” Karel hinted. “Veeeery special… Some wild tobacco maybe?”

  JJ just smiled. Wild tobacco was local code for dagga—marijuana.

  In these climes, low-grade versions of the plant grew wild and carried no social stigma; it had a long cultural legacy and a short legal sanction.

  JJ chuckled. “Ja, Oom. That stuff will make you slow and stupid.”

  “This old bushman is happy to be slow and stupid if it turns off the cold in his bones.”

  Just then, Dawie came puffing up the dirt drive barefooted and dusty.

  “Hello Meneer,” he greeted JJ, and held his gaze with uncharacteristic assurance. The boy’s eyes were alive with knowing.

  “This one is Dawie,” Karel said with great pride, his eyes sparkling with love for the boy.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you.” JJ offered Dawie a handshake.

  The lad’s grip was firm and dry, his small bony fist like a knot of hardwood.

  “Thank you Meneer. Meneer is a friend of Dara?”

  “Yes,” JJ confirmed. “I believe you spent a lot of time with him.”

  “Ja Meneer. Meneer, how is Dara?”

  “He is going home from the hospital today, you can call him.”

  The lad shuffled and looked at his feet, offering an unconvincing, “I will.”

  “Our phone eeees broken, Meneer. We need a new phone because it doesn’t work anymore,” one of the other boys on the fringes chipped in.

  “Jy… voetsak…! Get away from here!” Dawie’s backhand gesture emphasized as he scolded his peer. “Moenie kom staan en bedel nie,” he added and laid into his peer, warning him with several rapid versions of colloquialisms to not come stand around begging.

  JJ saw Dawie’s leadership role accepted by the others who all jumped with fright. He instantly liked the boy’s pride and his anger at not wanting to betray to an outsider their impoverished state that left them without even a phone between them.

  “Let’s see…” JJ said to himself rhetorically when Dawie was done.

  “Meneer?”

  “Niks nie… nothing…” he declined the details of his thoughts. “You go to school every day?” He quizzed the lad instead.

  “Jaaaa, Meneer!” Dawie replied with grave emphasis on the affirmative. “I never miss a day!”

  The sea of little spectators who were pretending not to listen—as they most certainly shouldn’t have been—all nodded agreement just as earnestly, two or three of them verbally chipping in positive murmurs confirming Dawie’s diligence.

  “You have told your Oupa about the SKA? The telescope?”

  “Every day!” he declared. “I am very excited about it. They have told us all about it at school.”

  The old man was nodding sagely, leaving JJ relieved that sense was prevailing in this unlikely little corner of the region.

  On a whim, so taken was he with the boy, JJ said something he hadn’t planned to say, “Do you want to come to the city?”

  It was out before he even understood why he’d said it.

  The boy’s eyes looked startled and he vigorously agreed without hesitation.

  “A visit when Dara comes—we can arrange that—and then we’ll see…” JJ left what was on his mind unsaid.

  “It would be good if he went to the city,” Karel chimed in. “A boy like this must learn so that he can grow and make us all strong.”

  “I will look into it,” JJ promised. He knew Marsha was thinking along the same lines and on an impulse had effectively offered to collaborate.

  JJ stood up and the old man battled to his feet too, refusing orders to stay seated. “I must move these old bones,” he chuckled, “or they’ll permanently take root.”

  “I would like to stay, but it’s a long drive to my home still.”

  JJ put out his hand to shake but the old man used it as a pivot to pull himself toward the big man. It was a first time ever—ever—that he had hugged a white man, but something in the moment commanded him to do so.

  The act came as a surprise to JJ in whose culture men did not ordinarily hug—they certainly did not hug across a colour bar. But it was a natural moment, one he was glad for, allowing him to push another silent hidden artefact of a miserable legacy dormant within, away and behind him.

  “In case we don’t meet again, Baas,” the frail old man was saying.

  JJ could feel the truth of it in his bony shoulder blades, which seemed at this instant so much like angel’s wings.

  “No talk like that,” JJ scolded him. “We all need you too much… your wisdom.”

  “Any wisdom I have is in this boy now,” the old man retorted.

  “I’m back shortly,” JJ assured, inclining his head for Dawie to follow. He turned and walked away toward the car.

  The two made their way past the others doing Sunday things. Many farewell greetings later, the giant and the urchin were rounding the gentle bend and obscured from sight by the trees.

  Karel lay down again to think about this very strange turn of events—the son of the policeman, the Dominee’s once-favourite, taking a stand against them.

  It made him laugh.

  “You look after your grandfather,” JJ told Dawie. From his wallet he peeled a sizeable wad of notes, folded them and then surreptitiously slipped them to Dawie so the ragtag band of curious followers couldn’t see. “I want you to buy a mobile phone with that and some airtime. I’ll give you my number and email—you have computers at school—so we’ll stay in touch. Your grandfather is going to need special attention. I am going to arrange that he gets properly assessed at the clinic on a regular basis. And, Dawie… there is some serious business going on here; I need you to be my agent.”

  The boy was beaming—deputized as an agent, he seemed to have grown vast in stature, taller and walking like a giant next to one.

  “You know who my father is?” he asked Dawie.

  “Ja Baas.”

  “When we’re alone you can call me JJ,” he said, and the boy looked abashed.

  “Ja Baas… JJ,” Dawie responded coyly.

  All right… it will take some getting used to… JJ reminded himself as the formal respects beyond the cities were still ingrained. “My father is a very good man,” he explained. “He sometimes seems angry, and as a policeman he is always suspicious—he is paid to be suspicious.”

  “Ja Baas… JJ.”

  JJ looked at the last few stragglers still nosing around close by and they read his meaning; they fell back half a dozen paces, out of earshot. “And I love my father like you love your grandfather… But a father can be wrong, I can still love him and know that he is wrong.”

  “Ja…”

  “I don’t want to hurt my father in any way. I don’t want to embarrass my mother in front of the volk.” He paused to let it sink in. “But there is a little trouble coming that will put me against my Pa and others. This can’t be helped. But the longer you and I… the longer we can keep this secret, the smaller the trouble, and the happier everyone will be.”

  “Ja Baas… JJ, I understand,” the boy said with nodding resolve.

  JJ opened the car and began to rummage in his bag for something. He found the package and held it as he spoke.

  “I need you to control the others. Like your grandfather, you will become the clan leader one day, and this is where your leadership begins. Here, today.”

  He handed the package over to Dawie.

  “Dankie Baas…” He hesitated and repeated it with much effort, “Dankie…” The Baas’ name resisted leaving his lips without its respectful title, “…JJ.”

  They were alone after all, he thought, just as the Baas said it should be.

  JJ squeezed his shoulder like a friend, surveyed up and down the road as if to check for prying eyes and stooped down into the bucket seat. The door shut with a precise thunk and the muscular engi
ne barked into life.

  The other kids startled and shot back several paces. Dawie stood his ground. He had never seen such a machine close up and his heart matched the beat of its engine. His knees felt like boiled spaghetti, so he turned and began to walk, then turned again to wave; walk, wave, walk.

  JJ put the car in gear and eased away, careful to not disturb dirt or flick stones.

  He saw Dawie sniff the bag in his hand and smile.

  JJ wagged his finger and shouted after him, “If you want to come to the city, that is for an old man’s pain only.”

  Chapter 23

  De Villiers Prokureurs, Attorneys, was uncomfortably close to the Carnarvon police station.

  Then again, Marsha reminded herself, everything in Carnarvon was uncomfortably close to that building and the man she had developed an aversion to.

  Before leaving, JJ had given her some pointers and made a call to someone he called Pieter, the attorney who would assist her. He’d spoken on the phone in front of Marsha but he might as well not have, as the entire conversation had been in Afrikaans.

  The building was drab and the carpet inside made of grey utility tiles of the non-existent-pile variety. The waiting room was depressing, the cheap plant was fake and dusty, and the magazines on the high-gloss lacquered pine coffee table incomprehensibly in Afrikaans. By the look of their well-thumbed pages, they were far out of date and concerned with farming and gossip.

  The secretary who greeted Marsha did so in Afrikaans also.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marsha apologized. “I can’t unfortunately understand.”

  “Oooh, sorry,” said the tubby lady with hair styled from another era. “You’re that American from England. I’m Beatrice. Meneer de Villiers… he-is called in and says he is almost here.”

  She made up for bad dress sense, turgid looks, and an unfortunate stumbling accent laced with odd sentence structure and words directly translated from her native Afrikaans with an engaging smile and warm welcome. “Can I get you some tea or koffie?”

  “That would be very nice, yes—uhhmm coffee please.”

  The lady rattled off a litany of questions and observations from behind the kitchenette screen as spoons clinked cups and what sounded like tin too.

  “You do take sugar?” Beatrice asked as she handed over a steaming mug, advising that there were already three in and it was stirred.

  Marsha looked into the swirling muck just placed in her hand and wished she’d asked for water, which would be harder to ruin. But Beatrice was telling her all about the hairdresser in town that was introducing a fantastic new system for affixing fingernail extensions. Or that’s what Marsha thought she could glean from the broken English and even more confused specifics that Beatrice had only just herself heard about this morning from a Mrs. Vermeulen.

  Marsha’s reservations for pursuing Dara’s issue through this law firm were peaking. On the other hand, JJ had warned that the only other attorney in the town would be hostile to her. “He’s an elder in the church,” he’d mentioned, and by now she realized that no more need be said.

  Beatrice was just getting going on some problems she was having with a tooth and the difficulties of getting it resolved in such a backwater, when Marsha saw a latest-model SUV pull up outside and park alongside her own. By now, quite what sort of vehicle she’d expected she did not know.

  The man who alighted was stylishly dressed, at least for who she’d thought might appear. By this stage of her acquaintance with Beatrice, a blue safari suited man with high socks carrying a comb for a crew-cut hairstyle and steel-rimmed glasses had seemed most probable.

  He came in through the door with a smile and apology for being late. “I’m Pieter. Please come on through, Mrs. Martin—Beatrice, can you organize coffee please. Would you like?” he asked, looking sideways at Marsha.

  She’d just managed a single sip of the over-sweetened dishwater and had bravely managed to swallow it only because Beatrice had kept a close eye on her, so she declined Pieter’s offer. “Please call me Marsha,” she added.

  “Thank you,” he said to Marsha. He’d seen the liquid misery in her hand and rounded on Beatrice. “Agghh nee, Beatrice! You gave her that rubbish you drink.” He took the mug from Marsha’s hand and passed it to Beatrice. “And you put three spoons of sugar in it I’m sure?”

  Beatrice hung her head mournfully and admitted with tiny nods that he was right.

  “I can’t seem to train her,” he complained to Marsha in front of her. “She’s so good with filing and on the phone but she thinks everybody else’s taste buds are as bad as hers.”

  Marsha found herself intrigued with this strange little office, its internal dramas and over-zealous idiosyncratic receptionist.

  “Now you make us some proper coffee—the one I bring from Cape Town. And use the new machine, not that old drip filter!” Pieter was gentle but firm. His tone sounded weary. Evidently this was a long-enduring skirmish.

  “Is your husband joining us?”

  “I’m afraid not. He’s supposed to be leaving soon and we felt that it’s best if I take it from start to finish. He’s getting as much time in with Dara as he can.”

  Pieter ushered Marsha into his office and shut the door behind him.

  Inside, it was much more lavish. A new laptop sat on the desk and a row of bound legal books filled the walls. The carpet was plush and the Herman Miller office chairs were straight out of any leading IT company’s office. The whole experience of the starkly differentiated division between the two rooms was bewildering.

  Pieter saw her confusion and began to explain.

  His expression said, I know what you must be thinking, but there is a good explanation.

  “This little town is changing fast; it’s a work in progress. I took over the practice from my father. The reception is still as it was; if you change things too fast you scare away the old-timers. I just couldn’t look at it in here all day long.”

  “I was wondering,” Marsha agreed.

  “And Beatrice came with the deal. She’s dyed in the wool, and it’s a slow process to change her. I’m sorry about the instant coffee—it’s more chicory than anything. It seemed delicious in our past too; tastes in all things are slow to change, hey?” He grimaced, and she liked him.

  “I understand. In a small town like this, the people don’t like change.”

  “The older people hate it, but the younger generation are all for it. I was a year behind JJ and also moved to Cape Town; he went abroad and married a foreigner. I wasn’t coming back till my wife fell pregnant. She’s from around here, and you know…”

  “I’m sure. It’s a lovely lifestyle if you’ve got roots.”

  “It is. But it is also quite challenging once you’re exposed to a different perspective.”

  “Which brings me to my son.”

  “Yes, how is he doing?”

  “Not quite well enough to travel but he’s mobile again. He’s in a lot of pain.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s been a rough time. Out of our comfort zone, so much to take in and then… well…. this.”

  Beatrice came in and the cappuccinos she brought smelled and looked perfect.

  “It’s one of those capsule machines, automated.” Pieter had seen Marsha’s relief. “Now isn’t that easier and nicer, Beatrice?”

  “I prefer my Koffiehuis, Meneer.” She went out muttering about the outrageous cost of the cartridges.

  “I’m hellish sorry about the welcome our little town’s given you and your boy.”

  “Please—I’m not blaming the town, that would be irrational. But I do think there’s a real problem here. I think there are a few people who that are dangerously fanatical. Dara has paid a price he didn’t deserve; nobody can ‘un-pay’ it.” She paused and shook her head, pragmatism wrestling visibly with emotion. “It really is outrageous. It’s only my idealism and desire to be sensible that has kept me from packing up and heading for home.”

  �
�I appreciate that and thank you that you didn’t,” Pieter agreed. “Let’s get to it and get you justice.”

  “I want to be honest,” Marsha replied. “I don’t think we’ll come close to seeing justice. On the other hand, I’m not going to let the incident just slide. I don’t want Dara to see me quit.”

  “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much justice we can get. How does Dara feel about taking this on?”

  “He’s very upset and that’s upsetting to me. He’s gone through a lot for a sensitive boy. He shrugged off the attack at the school amazingly well. I was very proud of that; he turned that proverbial cheek.” She fidgeted with her keys.

  “If I may…” Pieter interjected. “It’s interesting, your use of the phrase other cheek.”

  “Oh… you mean its biblical roots?”

  “Sure, yes… ‘Atheists in our town…’” His fingers framed the words in the air. “You’re all the buzz.”

  Marsha smiled, appreciating Pieter’s subtlety in pointing out how an opposing attorney might aim to mangle anything she said. “I don’t think there’s a monopoly on the sentiment,” she suggested. “To be a pacifist is the cornerstone of humanism. I think that welding pacifism to a theology is simply a habit for those who haven’t thought it through.”

  “Interesting. You’re right… and you’re quick,” Pieter smiled. “I prefer clients who understand why they’re saying something; plenty don’t. I distracted you, you were saying about Dara?”

  “Well, after this attack, with his injuries so severe, the doctor kept him heavily sedated for the first few days. Dara’s also suffered quite a bit of post-trauma… nightmares. My husband’s very British. He’s been an absolute pillar, helping us all stay objective. And, I must say, JJ’s sister—she’s been visiting regularly. And… oh, please keep that to yourself; it’s apparently a… a bit of an issue with the father.”

  “I know,” Pieter declared, “JJ told me. Lots of drama on the home front.”